Farmer Wants A Wife fans have been saying in the last few years that they feel like the show is veering away from its wholesome values into Married At First Sight territory, and they don’t like it.
One viewer wrote online after Tuesday night’s episode, “Such a shame this show has changed so much. It started as a really good, genuine feel-good show that was wholesome, realistic and enjoyable.
“The success rate was good. Now it is heading into bad territory. My Kitchen Rules was ruined in the same way. Why have villains or troublemakers, or is it just about ratings? If we wanted to watch false, venomous, vain, self-opinionated girls, we would watch garbage like MAFS. Now you are going to turn this once good show into another piece of trash TV.”
Rob McKnight, media commentator and former TV producer, previously told WHO that there is “no doubt” that Farmer Wants A Wife is trying to replicate MAFS‘ success.
He added that Farmer Wants A Wife has historically had more relationship success than MAFS because it has “traditionally felt more sincere and relationship-focused than MAFS”.
“Producers are smart enough to know they will alienate the audience if they go too far. The show needs to keep its heart to keep viewers who find it a nice alternative to MAFS, even if it can’t achieve the same ratings results.”
However, “conflict rates”, he explained, so we can probably expect to see this more and more on the show, and that has become clear this season on Farmer Zac’s farm.
Miranda has made it known that she’s not on the farm to make friends – she wants Zac, and she’s not afraid of a little confrontation with the other women.
After finding out that Maya had spoken about her to Zac’s twin sister, Isobel, Miranda confronted her in the group.
The confrontation was too much for Grace, who wasn’t even really involved, so she ended up in tears and was comforted by Lily, one of Farmer Dylan’s girls.
Farmer Zac’s reaction to the MAFS comparisons
While viewers watch the tension boil over onscreen, Farmer Zac admits that looking back on the chaos hasn’t been easy.
Speaking to WHO, he responded to fans who have compared the show to MAFS, saying, “Oh God, drama is one of those things I try to stay well away from. I hate it, hate getting myself involved with it.
“It’s come up a couple times,” he added. “I just sort of can’t really deal with confrontation, but I know there was a lot of drama within the ladies, and I’ve sort of tried to stay out of it, but who knows what the best decision was for me to do in that scenario.”
He shared that he just wanted everyone “to have a fun time”, and that “when there was some dramatic things happening, it just wasn’t sitting well with me”.
Farmer Zac reveals the hardest part of the filming process
Speaking about the hardest part of the whole process, Zac shared once again that he just wanted to try to keep everyone happy.
“I know it’s a dating show, but I still wanted everyone to get along, and I knew the person that I would want to end up with is someone who would be able to go through this experience without causing drama or anything like that.
“And I think that’s what I wanted at the end of the day, just for everyone to get along well, so we can all go through this experience and make it out unscathed.”
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