La Sposa Perfetta (The Perfect Bride) is a reality show featuring five Italian mothers on the mission to find the perfect bride for their ‘mummy’s boys’. The first episode was watched in Italy by over 3 million households and the program is hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The Italian state broadcaster Rai bought the program from Turkey, where the reality show was a smash hit.
‘The Perfect Bride’, a hybrid show where Big Brother meets Blind date and Love Island, has managed to upset a big part of the public in Italy and abroad. The fact that RAI is a public service, paid with tax-payers’ money, hasn’t helped cool down the critics.
The show features five single men, their mothers and 18 fabulous looking young candidates to be their dream wife and daughter in law.
In the first programme, the would-be-mother-in-laws had the chance to interrogate the wannabe-brides, before moving to a villa outside Milan. Once installed at the villa, the mothers co-habit with the wannabe-brides and will be able to filter down the competition until they get ‘the one’, the brave woman who survives the in-law daily torture.
In the meantime, the viewers can vote to kick out of the house those candidates they dislike. Sounds like a blast from the past?
Politicians and public personalities have branded the show as insulting, vulgar, sexist and noxious for the dignity of women, as it restores male dominance in ‘unacceptable ways’.
The director of the channel screening the show, Antonio Marano, defended the programme saying it brings ‘to the light of day relationships that are eternal.’
