I’m not sure how much you learn about the human heart from the dating show Love Is Blind. Probably the most surprising thing about it is its conservatism, given that it has arrived quite late in the life-cycle of reality TV. The conceit is that participants each have to sit in their own individual dating pod, speed dating one another though screens. The first time they actually see each other is when one has already proposed marriage, the other accepted. They then go on “honeymoon” and everything, generally speaking, falls apart. Since filming started in 2018, only eight couples out of 23 across five US seasons have remained married.
The US edition first aired in February 2020, by which time one couple was already in an established marriage, which they had to conceal for a year to avoid spoilers. The franchise had a good pandemic: within four weeks of the premiere, Netflix reported that 30 million households had watched it. It’s been the runaway success of all their unscripted dramas: in 2022, only three shows – Ozark, Stranger Things and Cocomelon – spent more days in the streamer’s US top 10.
