I Wanna Marry Harry, which starts this week on Fox in the US, is the most brazenly morally bankrupt reality show to air on network television since the lawless years of the early aughts.
Back when the wildly successful first seasons of Survivor set off a bonanza for the format, producers pretty freely explored just how distasteful a show could be before it became too distasteful.
It was a muck-burrowing period that sludged upon us Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, Temptation Island, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, Joe Millionaire – of which I Wanna Marry ‘Harry’ is just an update with a fauxyal – and ended with The Swan, a plastic surgery makeover show that still retains the dubious distinction of being the vilest reality show ever to exist.
But that was more than a decade ago! And so here comes Harry, a show predicated on the uncomfortable, but not entirely insupportable, supposition that audiences totally will watch something icky, sordid and morally wanting, so long as a minimal effort is made to make it look like a love story.
A British man named Matt Hicks, who kind of resembles Prince Harry, impersonates him for 12 American women who think they are on a dating show.
This is so obviously mean-spirited and disingenuous, the show’s only recourse is to pretend that it is not. To do this, the show presents Matt as just in it for love.
Matt is a “poor” guy (please ignore his upper-class accent) who cleans up oil spills and is never given the time of day by the women he deserves.
“Can love survive when fame, wealth and status melt away” the show asks, framing the story as one in which it is Matt, and not the women, who’s taking the big risk. He’s opening up his heart even though it is possible he will be rejected – not for being a liar and a manipulator, but just for his blameless status as a non-prince. What non-prince among us cannot relate
For all of this to work, the women have to mistake a snake in the grass for a member of the royal family. And this is Harry’s insidious pi
