Mangan review
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/19/the-dark-side-of-married-at-first-sight-review-panorama-documentary-allegations
"..There is enough in this half-hour programme to fuel a hundred, a thousand documentaries. And that’s before you factor in the responses proliferating on social media: that the women’s “failure” to report the attacks to police means that they are liars in pursuit of lucrative compensation claims, that going on a reality show means that you are an attention-seeker who has just found another way to seek it (or that you, somehow, deserve everything you got), that a man’s decision not to pull out is a meaningless act, and so on and on – and what they tell us about sociocultural attitudes and sexual politics today.
The programme itself is largely concerned with timelines – when did CPL and Channel 4 know which allegations, when should filming or broadcasting have been stopped – and what duty of care is owed by commissioners and programme-makers to their contributors. This is surely what will most concern the people carrying out the external review into contributor welfare that was commissioned last month and the lawyers doubtless massing around the companies and individuals concerned.
For those watching, however, the takeaways might be slightly different. Those entirely unfamiliar with the show might be boggling at the very idea of it. Those more jaded might limit themselves to sighing at the notion that any amount of pre-show vetting, welfare and psychological support (and CPL says its protocols are “gold standard” and “industry-leading”) can guard against harm in a situation where strangers of the opposite sex are put together, isolated from friends and family, required to take part in “games” (such as ranking the attractiveness of other contestants in front of partners) that increase volatility, and are subject to intense pressures to perform in all sorts of ways they might otherwise be able to resist. And all in a world where violence against women and girls from men is rampant and so widely tolerated as to be largely invisible and virtually decriminalised.
If this is the end of MAFS, I’ll be delighted. If it’s not, I won’t be at all surprised."