Shirin Kale

I've been a watcher of reality TV and a lover of reality TV for almost 20 years.

I remember watching the first season of Big Brother when I was 11 and I remember watching them paint themselves in clay and press them up against the walls of that house and just thinking like, what on earth is this crazy show I'm watching?

I was probably too young to be watching it, but I was watching it.

Some of my favourite moments of TV ever have been on reality TV.

You know, I think I watched the David's Dead clip from Celebrity Big Brother.

Once every three months when I need to be cheered up.

No, it's not.

It's just the most amazing five minutes of TV.

It's so funny.

You know, come dine with me.

What a sad little life, Jane.

Oh, my God.

But my love for reality TV is very much offset by a feeling of guilt, which is that I kind of feel like one of the spectators in the Coliseum sometimes, you know, like eating nuts while the gladiators fight.

Having watched these shows for my entire adult life, I've come to terms with the fact that I don't think you can really make this sausage ethically.

You know, as a viewer, I'm complicit in this too.

I've enjoyed the conflict.

I've texted my friends about it.

When you have couples living together who don't know each other, who are being thrust together in these really close living quarters and are sleeping in the same bed, I don't know how you make that show safe.

Yes.

So Married at First Sight UK, which is the British version of an international franchise that is very popular all around the world, was recently the subject of a Panorama investigation in which three women made allegations of non-consensual or exploitative sexual practices.