Shirin Kale

And I would characterize as what happens to those contributors as quite coercive, because instead of, you know, waking up on day one of the honeymoon and being like, I'm out, they're encouraged to stay in the show, even when there's clearly no chemistry between them and they don't even like each other very much.

And that is purely so that you can film their arguments.

And I think in that it's a throwback to an earlier era of reality TV.

You know, I would say kind of the Wild West era of reality TV that we saw in the 2000s and 2010s when you had incredibly shocking shows.

I mean, for me, the sort of reality TV moments that stand out, you know, like Big Brother, Fight Night, when security had to be pulled into the house to break apart couples.

I just want to thank you.

That type of very confrontational, conflict-driven show is a show that actually had slightly gone out of favour here in the UK.

We had moved towards a more gentle, kind model of reality TV.

Love Island also became much less conflict-driven and you also have on Love Island a real emphasis on resolution.

Married at First Sight UK I would say is quite a conflict-driven show compared to others.

It's really interesting because before Panorama aired, Channel 4, I think, put out quite a robust statement saying that these allegations were uncooperated.

But post-airing, Channel 4 has removed all episodes of Married at First Sight from its on-demand streaming service.

And it has commissioned an external review of welfare after being presented what it described as serious allegations of undoing.

Lawyers for CPL, which is the independent production company that makes the show, has said that its welfare system is gold standard and it has defended how it acted in all three of these cases.

Interestingly, the government has actually responded as well, saying that these allegations are serious and that there should be consequences for criminality of undoing.

So Ian Katz, who is Channel 4's chief content officer, has put out a statement saying that he watched the programme and he heard the women's accounts and he found them to be very troubling.

He said,

He said that he was confident based on the knowledge that they had at the time that they made the right decisions, that they ensured the women involved were being kept safe when issues were raised to them and they gave them appropriate support.

He also went on to say that obviously these are serious allegations and they will be taking a second look at them to see if there's anything they need to learn in the future to protect contributors on their shows.

What I think is really interesting here is that clearly there appear to have been broader issues here about safeguarding of contestants in this show, because this is not the first time Married at First Sight UK has had issues to do with male contestants.