The key facts
- Channel 4 has dropped Married at First Sight UK: even the already-filmed sixth season and the spin-off Second Married at First Sight will not air
- The reviews found that the rules met Ofcom requirements but recorded cases where safety measures were not fully applied
- Channel 4 chief executive Priya Dogra said that implementing the recommendations would effectively have destroyed the show's format
The show has been pulled off the air
One of the UK's most popular reality shows, Married at First Sight UK, will no longer air on Channel 4. The broadcaster has dropped the project after three former female contestants accused it of sexual violence — viewers will not even see the already-filmed season, Sky News reports. The original British programme had run since 2015: experts matched pairs of strangers who met for the first time at a symbolic wedding ceremony and then tried to build a relationship under camera observation.
The allegations and the investigations
The scandal broke out in May following a BBC Panorama investigation. Two women said they had been raped by their on-screen husbands while taking part in the programme, and a third described sexual acts without her consent. All three men rejected the allegations; later, one of the participants was detained on suspicion of rape, but his guilt has not been established. After the allegations became public, Channel 4 removed previous seasons from its platforms and commissioned two independent reviews: the law firm Clyde & Co examined how the producers ensured participants' safety and responded to complaints, while the second review was led by former BBC One controller Lorraine Heggessey.
What the findings showed
According to the review findings published by Channel 4, the existing duty-of-care rules met the requirements of the media regulator Ofcom, and the experts found no breaches of its code. At the same time, individual cases were identified in which the prescribed safety measures were not fully applied. The allegations of sexual violence themselves were not examined as part of these reviews. Another part of the investigation showed that the realities of the format could create psychological pressure on participants and push them toward intimacy, while limited contact with family and friends increased the contestants' dependence on the production crew.
Why even the recommendations could not save the project
The experts proposed changing the rules: housing couples in separate bedrooms at the start of their acquaintance, providing panic buttons, and dropping certain challenges related to intimate life. In their view, after such changes the project could have continued. However, Channel 4 chief executive Priya Dogra decided to end the programme for good: according to her, implementing all the recommendations would have required such intensive supervision of participants that the familiar format would effectively have ceased to exist. She apologised to the women who spoke about what had happened and announced that the project's budget would be redirected to new shows. The cancellation affected the sixth season of the revamped version, filmed earlier this year, and the launch of the spin-off Second Married at First Sight.
Context
The issue of sexual violence allegations remains a painful one for the British entertainment industry as a whole: as Life.ru reported, in October a court in London heard from a woman accusing comedian and TV presenter Russell Brand of rape. Brand rejects the charges against him; this case is unrelated to the Married at First Sight participants.
