Sayak Basu
Reality television is one of the most booming sub-genres of TV shows at the moment. This format of shows has been there since the birth of the medium itself and is still continuing to attract a vast majority of audiences, not only in America but all over the world. Now there are various types of reality shows, and each of them comes with its own perks. If you have watched dating reality shows, you will be familiar with the fact that here, more than the challenges (or tasks) in which the participants compete, the drama is created through their inner conflicts which reach their climax either at the end of each episode or at the end of the week. The ABC original series ‘The Bachelor‘ also works in a similar manner.
In this series, the center of attraction is one man. He has to choose from a bevy of women the person who is going to be absolutely perfect as his life partner. The women who compete in this series have to go through various rounds of tasks to determine who stays or who goes. A lot depends on the bachelor himself as well, as he is the one who can eliminate a contestant during any point of time by not handing her a rose, which is the symbol of telling someone whether she stays or goes. ‘The Bachelor’ has received certain complaints at times, with former participants telling that what the audiences get to see is highly edited footage which does not represent the reality and is modified in a way to tell a story. Despite all the criticism, ‘The Bachelor’ is a series which is enjoyed by many, drawing in millions of viewers each season who enjoy the show thoroughly. If you also love watching ‘The Bachelor’, here are some other shows you can check out. You can watch many of these shows like ‘The Bachelor’ on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime.
7. The Bachelorette (2003-)
A direct spinoff of the series ‘The Bachelor’, this show just reverses the roles of its former predecessor by making a woman choose from 25-30 men who appear as contestants on the show, competing for her hand. However, the woman who gets to be the bachelorette in a season is the runner-up of the previous season of ‘The Bachelor’. Interestingly enough, some of the pairings made at the end of each season of this show have really gone ahead and married each other. ‘The Bachelorette’ has been accused by former participants and people who worked on the show of creating stereotyped characters out of them and always presenting them in a wrong light to generate enough interest from the audiences. While the first four seasons of the series were filmed in America, ‘The Bachelorette’ has since started traveling the world, choosing a different luxury hotel in a different part of the world each time.
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6. Bachelor In Paradise (2014-)
This series is another spinoff of ‘The Bachelor’ franchise, and here again, we have contestants who had previously participated in ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’. This series takes all those previous contestants and puts them to task once again, taking them to a romantic destination to find love. Of course, in this case, the dynamics are different than what we have seen earlier. Here, each man is given a rose to give to the woman he would like to date. If there is an uneven distribution of the number of male and female participants, the ones who do not receive a rose at the end of the first round are sent home immediately. The couples start pairing up and compete against each other in several different tasks to ultimately come out on top. After someone is eliminated, a new participant generally takes his/her place. Many of the contestants whom we have seen in this series over the years are still together.
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5. Love Island (2015-)
A British reality TV series, ‘Love Island‘ is like ‘Big Brother’, but set on an island instead of a house. Here, being a romantic couple is not that necessary. What is actually important is for each person to get together with another one and team up in order to win no matter the equation between them. After each round of elimination, each person is given the option of wanting to form another couple with someone else or to stick with one’s own partner. Those who are left single, are naturally shown the door. The elimination of a couple is, however, dependent on the people watching back at home. They have to vote for their favorite contestants. ‘Love Island’ is widely recognized as one of the best shows in its own format, and it also ended up winning the BAFTA TV Award for the ‘Best Reality and Constructed Factual’ series.
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4. The Proposal (2018)
This ABC dating reality show uses a format unlike any other we have seen thus far. Here, the contestants have to fight amongst each other for the affection of a mysterious single whose identity we do not know until the end of the episode. Each episode sees 10 participants competing in different rounds until only two are left. Among these rounds, they also have to meet a family member of the bachelor/bachelorette and try to impress them. Despite its change in format, the show has been subject to criticism and accused of just imitating ‘The Bachelor’ with a few twists along the way. No wonder the series did not manage to last for more than a single season, but still makes for a decent watch.
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3. Ready For Love (2013)
This is another dating reality series which did not manage to last for more than a single season. Renowned actress Eva Longoria is the producer of this series where she brought in three eligible bachelors- a financier, a rock musician, and an entrepreneur to find the ideal partners for them. Each of these three participants has 12 ladies dedicated to him who all compete against each other to win that particular man’s affection. These ladies had all applied through a specially designed app Facebook made just for this TV show. ‘Ready For Love’ never got any love, either from the producers or from the audiences. NBC even pulled off this series from its scheduled time just after the first two episodes.
2. Are You The One? (2014-)
This MTV reality series is quite different from the other matchmaking shows that we have listed here. In this show, It is the producers who use an algorithm of their own to figure out the perfect matches between the contestants. The contestants’ job is to determine the perfect matches as accurately as they can. If the whole group manages to get the entire order correctly, they are collectively awarded $1 million. The contestants form matches based on their presumptions and go about completing the tasks assigned to them, only to figure out at the end of each episode who his/her correct match is supposed to be. Interestingly, the show took away the romantic angle from the seventh season onwards and paired contestants irrespective of their gender. The series has become extremely popular all over the world, with it being adapted in various countries like Brazil, Sweden, Denmark, and so on.
1. The Bachelor Winter Games (2018)
An interesting twist on the format of ‘The Bachelor’, this series adds winter sports to the entire dating reality show concept. Interestingly enough, ABC brought out this series during the 2018 winter games as a counter program to NBC telecasting the Games itself. Being an extremely popular show across the world, ‘The Bachelor’ has had several variations across the world. And contestants from all these different variations were brought together for this special spinoff. The fact these contestants are not seasoned athletes only means that they will fumble and fall along the way. Thus, ABC managed to squeeze in some humor within the drama and competitive spirit of the series.
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