10 Shows To Watch If You Like Married At First Sight

Married At First Sight season 17’s premiere presented viewers with one of the most dramatic seasons ever, featuring a runaway bride. During the October 2023 debut of Married At First Sight, the audience watched Michael Shiakallis standing at the altar, ready to meet his wife for the first time. As his potential bride walked down the aisle, she noted that she couldn’t proceed with the ceremony, shocking everyone. However, Michael married another bride, Chloe Brown, in March 2023, six weeks after the MAFS couple were married in January.

Although countless TV shows have popped up over the years, the search for love remains the one true and tried concept the audience enjoys. For decades, single people looking for soulmates have turned to reality TV, leading to some of the best and most worthy dramatic confrontations. Reality TV producers have developed unique compatibility tests to help contestants find their unique matches over the years. With the many available, finding a reality show that perfectly balances drama and romance can be difficult.

Nothing beats binge-watching some of the most interesting dating shows. If viewers are mainly searching for a show that offers hours of entertainment or have finished watching Married At First Sight season 17 and have found themselves reading through the reviews to catch up on any unfolding drama and scrolling through the cast’s social media platforms, there are more shows you’d love. Until Married At First Sight season 18 airs, there are many similar shows viewers can watch.

10

Love Is Blind

Available On Netflix

The dust hasn’t settled in Love Is Blind season 6 after an incredible ending and explosive reunion that shocked the audience. What has made Love Is Blind one of the most popular reality TV programs is that it has regular people as the participants, making it one of the better dating shows. Here, the participants connect in the pods without meeting their potential matches and develop deeper connections beyond their physical appearance.

The competition gets interesting because participants not only work towards falling in love with a person’s personality rather than their physical appearance. The competition went international with spin-offs such as Love Is Blind Sweden, Brazil, and Japan. It leads to important love conversations, providing a perfect balance between heartbreak, drama, and intense cliffhangers. For instance, season 6 offered more meaningful conversations including whether Chelsea Blackwell resembles Megan Fox.

9

The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On

Available On Netflix

The Ultimatum: Marry Or Move On presents a new concept where one person is ready to get married and gives an ultimatum, and the other one isn’t. The couples are forced to break up and speed date and are eventually matched up for trial marriages, living with their new partners for at least three weeks. Afterward, an individual returns to their original partners and stays with them for three weeks. They need to decide whether to break up with their original partners, date the new person from the trial marriage, or move on.

The show’s messy but drama-filled, keeping the audience engaged to the end. It has at times proven that any relationship that comes from prodding, in some cases, forms such a bad foundation, but it is pretty interesting to see the drama unfold. There is a lot to sit and sift through emotionally since most casts are questioning who they are, leading to more reflection of an individual rather than a couple. The show was quite successful such that the producers had a spin-off, The Ultimatum: Queer Love.

8

The Golden Bachelor

Available On Hulu

Dating shows often center around young people looking for love and often focus on marriage and settling down. The Bachelor franchise was in a decaying form, ready to breathe new life and add new energy to save it from its worst tendencies of having young 20s contestants looking for money and fame. Introducing The Golden Bachelor season 1 brought about the change the show needed for a while. It presents senior citizens looking for love and shows how their desires evolve, showing what people might need later in life after marriage and kids.

It is interesting to see physical affection between older folks, something rarely shown on reality shows. Recently, The Bachelor franchise has been a snooze-fest, with the contestants motivated more by the internet hype than by finding love on the network. Also, the participants seemed fully aware of The Bachelor‘s rules, which ruined the experiment. The Golden Bachelor still has the same storyline as The Bachelor but with an older demographic.

7

Perfect Match

Available On Netflix

Perfect Match features cast members from other big shows on Netflix, where the participants are all different in personality, and the shows they are from hardly interact. There are people from Love Is Blind, The Mole, and a few from The Circle. Each person has a different reason for being part of the show, with some wanting to win the competition and others looking for fame.

One of the things that makes Perfect Match stand out is the show brings new faces for every episode, allowing the contestants to test the limits of the existing individuals. For instance, Chase DeMoor from Too Hot To Handle and Love Is Blind and internet sensation Bartise Bowden brought a whole new dynamic into the house, which was interesting to watch. Shayne Jansen, a goofy fellow from Love Is Blind season 2, presented his vulnerable side, which is particularly interesting to watch as it showed how his breakup in the Love Is Blind finale affected him.

6

Prison Wives

Available On Lifetime & Hulu

The show provides an in-depth account of the lives of women who fell in love and married convicted felons. Every episode explores how these women struggle to find normalcy despite their choices and deal with the struggles that come with having a spouse behind bars. The wives emotionally support one another while their family members and friends judge them for staying with convicted men. Every episode of Prison Wives is devoted to showcasing real-life-emotionally changing effects that occur on individuals who have their loved ones in prison. It is refreshing for viewers to see stories told from a different perspective.

5

90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?

Available On TLC

90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? is a guilty pleasure thanks to its soap opera aspect that unwinds slowly. Although viewers can get the gist of the main show within a few minutes of watching it, they cut to another couple when it starts to get good. There is a lot of drama, especially with interracial couples, who seem to, at times, have dysfunctional love stories as the couples are opposite in every aspect.

Happily Ever After is for those who love drama. It was the spin-off that gave 90 Day Fiancé audience Jay Smith’s drama when he was caught cheating on his then-wife Ashley Martson and also The Family Chantel’s family dinner fight. There are many things to expect from 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? season 8, which is currently airing. The greatest thing about this spin-off is that fans are already familiar with the cast, unlike the others where they have to get to know the cast from the start.

4

Temptation Island

Available On Peacock

Temptation Island is a show ahead of its time. It’s one of the OG programs that rarely gets proper credit for its impact on the current reality shows. Temptation Island first aired in the early 2000s and received a lot of criticism due to its approach. Couples were to test their relationship by living with a group of singles, and it lasted for three seasons before its end.

However, Temptation Island spawned international versions over the years before Fox revived it and tweaked the show’s format. The reality show should be next on the list for any reality show fanatic as it has included many ingredients that make an incredible show. Aside from the aesthetic differences between the 2001 and 2023 episodes, such as misogynistic attitudes and thin eyebrows, the main changes to Temptation Island have allowed it to evolve with the current attitude towards dating.

3

The Bachelor

Available On Hulu

The Bachelor franchise has been around for over 22 years, with over 40 seasons of matchmaking between The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Shockingly, just a few of those couples have remained married. As of 2023, only six couples are together after 27 seasons of The Bachelor. Therefore, the success rate of these relationships deeply contradicts the show’s point. Most viewers see the contestants fall in love and go through heartbreaks in the chaotic drama but with a happy ending.

It satisfies the viewer’s inner hopeless romantic to watch couples fall in love and gives them hope there is someone for everyone out there. The Bachelor’s season 28 includes a story about Joey Graziadei, who had 32 women vying for his heart. The episodes are filled with melodrama, keeping the fans rooting for one contestant while waiting for the elimination of another as the franchise plays on societal conditioning and giving life to stereotypes.

2

The Ultimatum: Queer Love

Available On Netflix

People have been starving to get some queer drama, and it finally happened in the form of Netflix’s reality show, The Ultimatum: Queer Love. The viewers are watching a group of people struggling to resist and embody a normative cultural program simultaneously. The Ultimatum: Queer Love is different in that the individuals involved are aware that they are playing into the hetero-patriarchal norms.

The show is different from the couples on Love Is Blind and the original series The Ultimatum. The disagreements involve responsibilities for cooking and cleaning and explores varying opinions on whether to have children. The couples are infuriating and endearing, but frankly speaking, Queer Love doesn’t reach the magnitude of messiness people expect from reality TV.

1

Seeking Sister Wife

Available On TLC

Seeking Sister Wife is probably one of the cringest TV shows right now, and everyone on it is awkward. However, that is what makes the audience stay glued to their TV while following the lives of polygamous families living plural lifestyles. The show presents one man and his partner looking for a new wife, and it is strangely intriguing since polygamy is so frowned upon.

It has left many wondering how women feel watching their husbands court a potential sister’s wife. These families are way more messy than Kody Brown’s Sister Wives. Garrick and Danielle Merrifields, who ended Seeking Sister Wife season 4 heartbroken, are again back in season 5 looking for love. Garrick seems fixated on becoming a younger, hotter woman from Brazil and fails to see how gorgeous she is.

He makes polygamy look foolish while often using God to justify his ridiculous behavior. This makes his union seem like a one-sided, open-cult-like relationship as he is always ready for his next half-aged sister wife. However, just like Married At First Sight, Seeking Sister Wife is an interesting show for anyone looking for drama and something to binge-watch.