This viewer wants a knife

Want to know what my all-time, most-hated, can't-tear-myself-away-from-its-awfulness television show is? Here's a clue:


Don't bother watching the whole thing, unless you want to lose 5000 IQ points  and your general faith in humanity. (That sound you can hear is my blood boiling.)

Yes, another year has slipped through the hourglass, and so it's time for Nine to gift upon us another season (the fourth, to be exact) of their "rural romeos" spectacular, The Farmer Wants A Wife.

The Farmer Wants A Wife - it really puts a romantic spin on the whole rural loneliness thing, doesn't it? I wonder if they considered other titles, like The Farmer Needs A Wife, or The Farmer Would Like A Wife, or Anyone Want To Marry This Rather Nice Farmer?

Instead we're stuck with the titular equivalent of "The Farmer Knows What He Wants, And Isn't Afraid To Bash It Over The Head With A Club And Drag It Back To The Shearing Shed". 

No, instead we're stuck with a title that suggests - as it would seem many of the farmers involved believe - that these guys see finding "a woman" as an entitlement/right; they "want" one, so they'll bloody well get one. Hands up who remembers the blood-curdling Farmer James from last year's effort?

He was the charmer who described his female suitors thusly:

• "I chose Cherie because Ithought she was a character, but once I got to know her she was as rough as guts," James said in the latest edition of TV Week.
• "She needed a 44-gallon drum of spit to shine her up! The only reason I picked her was because I didn't have much choice. Some of the other guys had 200 women apply, but I only had 24," he said.

Gee, and I wonder why he only received 24 letters...

Anyway, I tuned in last night for this year's farmland freakshow and wasn't disappointed.

Of particular note is the moment all the "wives" are bussed in and put in a holding pen; when host Natalie Gruzlewski introduces the farmers, various shots of the women gnashing their teeth like rabid animals provide hours of post-viewing pleasure:


Here are some of my highlights from season four's first hour of power:

Farmer Brad, who earnestly tells us that he is looking for a woman with "whup-tang". What is "whup-tang"? I have no idea, though I suspect whoever ends up having it may live to hear the phrase bellowed in the conjugal bed. "Whup-tang!"

Farmer Phil, who obsessively quizzes his ten potential dates as to whether or not they like Brussels sprouts. Evidently, "You can tell a lot about someone" depending on their predilection for the bitter miniature cabbages.

Farmer Nate, who excitedly describes one "fit" dance-instructor date as having "buns of steel ... you could bounce a Brussels sprout off them". WTF, is Channel Nine being funded by the Brussels sprouts growers association? 

And Farmer Gavin (one half of the father-and-son team of cane cockies), who has a slightly scary smile and likes to grabble at the more comely of his female suitors. His hysterical laugh is matched only by "hurricane Therese", who runs up to him and jumps on him like a lemur. Later, when choosing his "top five" chicks, he lingers on the line "I'd like to... meet you again" as hard as the angle grinder in his pants.

And so it continues. I'm sure I'll tune in again, if only to squirm and whoop and holler my way through some of the most stomach-churning television around.

In truth, I'm sure they're all perfectly nice blokes (well, some of them), but there's just something so damned hideous about the show format - hey, who does like watching awkward pash action that has obviously been shot and reshot for maximum "romantic spontaneity" factor? - that it makes the whole thing about as romantic as throwing the Christians to the lions and watching them tear each other to shreds.

Which, funnily enough, is precisely what The Farmer Wants A Wife expects its female suitors to do out there in the outback.