MAFS vs Welcome to Wrexham

Trashy TV and bad narratives

I love a bit of reality TV. From Big Brother to Bake Off, I’m a Celebrity to Strictly, and Sewing Bee to Below Deck.

I love reality TV, but I fear that the love affair may be over.

I get bored.

Hector cat doing what cat’s do when they’re bored

Depending on the show format I’ll get bored sooner rather than later. I’ve got a much better chance of watching the whole series in a competition format like Strictly or Bake Off, even though I often lose interest in the weeds of mid-series to pick it up at the end.

This year, for the first time, I started watching Married at First Sight (MAFS). The show idea is one that should not have made it off the whiteboard of the first brainstorming session. And, after watching most of the 2022 UK series and a few of the AUS series, I stand by that opinion.

Here’s the problem - there’s no real dramatic narrative and I don’t care about the people.

In storytelling there has to be a narrative. There are different types of narratives and styles of story, but in general something has to happen.

In MAFS all the things that happen are contrived and controlled in an attempt to create dramatic action.

Which works up to a point. Everyone is very dramatic, but there’s no real story. It is all tell and no show. After the wedding and honeymoon, the couples are then thrown together for dinner parties and events with tasks. Tasks designed to create conflict in lieu of story.

The natural story of two strangers meeting and working out if they like each other is too slow for the makers of MAFS. We can’t journey along at the pace of the couple, we and they have to be pogoed between dramatic set pieces and confessionals with the emotional resonance of shrieking teenagers.

When folk are being pushed into conflict situations all the time, they tend to become one sided and character development is lost.

The lack of real narrative and story in MAFS and by extension other reality shows was brought into sharp contrast by the excellent storytelling in Welcome to Wrexham.

For those not in the know, it is the documentary about the small Welsh football club bought by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny.

The goal of the club is to progress to the top of their league and win promotion to the next league up at the end of the football season.

I regularly read the last page of a book before I reach the end, or look up plot summaries on Wikipedia for shows that I’m watching. It would have been so easy to look up the football results and find out if Wrexham made it out of their league, but I didn’t. I stayed hooked into the series, waiting a week between episodes to see what would happen next.

The series isn’t a straightforward linear narrative. It takes pit-stops on subjects like football hooliganism, and pops over to America and gently spoofs the bromance of the two owners.

But throughout the series the story telling captured me and I was hooked. I cared about the players, the owners, their advisors and the people of the town, because they all care. The framework of the season, with players coming and going, games won and lost, red cards and injuries all created peaks of drama. After each peak was the recovery with the insight and learning from it, and then off they went again to the next game or challenge. Would they win this match, would they get promoted, would they win a trophy?

I suppose this is the difference, reality tv vs a documentary.

For reality TV a dramatic narrative has to be engineered, either through competition or intervention, because people building relationships or living together or learning to dance, isn’t always very fast or interesting.

Documentaries tell a story that already exists. They may be told from a new point of view or perspective, but the filmmaker already knows the story is interesting and wants to tell it.

As with all good stories the end of the story isn’t why we read, watch or listen. Yes, we do want to know if the team gets out of their league, or if Beauty marries Beast, or if Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy get it together. But the outcome isn’t what we care about most. What we really care about is what happens to our team, Belle, Beast, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy to get them from the start to the finish. We care about the story and the story is in the people.

Is bigger better?

I'm thinking about story a lot at the moment as I'm completing my celebrant (officiant for my US friends) training.

As a wedding celebrant I will tell love stories and as funeral celebrant I will tell life stories. Every love and life has a story to tell, it doesn't have to be a big story to be meaningful.

In biz, especially digital business, the story presented is often big. Six figure launches, international acclaim and big financial wins.

The assumption is that everyone in business has the same definition of success and that looks like lots of zeros on the bottom line.

Over the last year or so in the digital marketing space that rhetoric got pretty boring.

Perhaps, like MAFS, bad digital marketing thrives on contrived drama rather than true storytelling?

What if success didn't look like that and success stories didn't have to be big to be and inspiring?

I've not rowed the Atlantic, overcome a life changing injury or made a million dollars.

I've done many interesting and intriguing things, and my life doesn't look like many people's version of success. I also know that I have changed peoples lives by creating events, running trainings and spending time with them.

Am I okay with that, yes. Though my bank balance might be less happy with it.

This chapter of my life is about looking after my mum and telling stories.

I'm really quite excited to have a quite life and tell the intimate, meaningful stories of love and life.

What’s your small story, I’d love to hear it in the comments or by email.

Thanks again for reading.

Ruth