{"id":408067,"date":"2026-05-02T08:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T08:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/408067\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T08:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T08:02:11","slug":"fox-announces-arranged-marriage-reality-dating-show-marriage-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/408067\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox announces arranged marriage reality dating show Marriage Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

It would be a stretch to say we\u2019re nostalgic for the Wild West period that reality shows went through in the early 2000s, when the massive popularity of glossed-up gameshows like Survivor\u00a0and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? kicked off a whole gold rush of TV producers finding ever-more inventive ways to get people to exchange their dignity for money and\/or celebrity on the cheap. But it\u00a0did\u00a0have a certain grotesque inventiveness to it, especially on Fox, which asked women to marry multi-millionaires (who may or may not<\/a> have been actual millionaires<\/a>), and offered plastic surgery as prizes for the insecure<\/a>. Almost all of it was gross, and surprisingly little of it made for good TV, but it was at least quite a bit weirder than the more respectable and predictable forms that reality TV has evolved into since.<\/p>\n

All of which is why we\u2019re absolutely fascinated to see that Fox has decided to get\u00a0back\u00a0into the \u201cmarry a person you\u2019ve never met\u201d reality TV game, announcing today that it was embarking on a new TV \u201cexperiment\u201d called\u00a0Marriage Market. (\u201cExperiments\u201d were big back in the 2000s, too, presumably because the word translates as \u201cIt\u2019s not our fault if this shit goes horrifically wrong.\u201d) Hosted by comedian Whitney Cummings, the series starts with 100 singles, and then completely removes them from the dating process: Instead, their family members will meet, negotiate, and ultimately select who pairs up. Once an alleged match has been found, the lucky couple will be introduced and then engaged on the spot, and \u201cFrom there, the couples and their families move in together, navigating real-life compatibility, big personalities, and even bigger expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides answering the question \u201cWhat would\u00a0The Circle\u00a0be like if everybody had to let their dad do all the texting?\u201d the series\u2019 initial marketing also has a weird sort of retrograde vibe to it, billing itself as a dating show where \u201cMom and dad are in total control.\u201d (Eliciting what we can only assume was a \u201cFinally!\u201d from the demographic of dating show fans annoyed they don\u2019t have a final say in who their children sleep with or marry.) That goes right down to the show\u2019s key art, viewable above, which shows a grown-ass woman being pushed around in a shopping trolley like a toddler\/ham shank by her parents.<\/p>\n

Marriage Market\u00a0is set to debut this fall on Fox; network president Michael Thorn issued a statement with the news, calling the show\u2014with no apparent trace of shame or irony\u2014\u201done of the most extreme marketplace spectacles you\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would be a stretch to say we\u2019re nostalgic for the Wild West period that reality shows went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-408067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}