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Why I Love...Wife Swap

A mother, father and two children
  • Posted at 5:06pm
  • 24 September 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT
  • 1 comment

When Wife Swap first hit our screens in 2003, the title titillatingly hinted at suburban sexual shenanigans, and we tuned in in droves - to discover, instead, a brow-furrowing social experiment.

A pair of women are transplanted into each other's homes - places that are, more often than not, radically different to their own - and expected to follow their new family's routines for the first week, before they get to do things their own way in the second.

While on paper it looks like the kind of car-crash reality television that many of us would stay late at work to avoid, Wife Swap somehow underpins those peek-through-your-fingers moments with a compulsive commentary on the British class divide. Where else could you see a posh, monied woman ordering her impecunious adopted husband to go out and shovel crap for a day in order to bring in some much-needed cash?

Even during the preamble to the swap, you're already wincing with anticipation at the clashes that will inevitably follow; one woman might stand in a pristine conservatory and expound at length on how routine is important, while her opposite number lounges on a filthy sofa in a shellsuit, mumbling that routine makes her want to scream.

Rather like taking a five-year-old for dinner at Claridge's, or sending the Duke of Edinburgh to see Busta Rhymes in concert, the show delights in plunging people into alien situations, before running to relative safety behind the camera lens.

Ken Lorimer's dispassionate, gloriously understated narration sets situations in hilarious context: "Back at the house, things aren't going so well," he might say, as the film cuts to a furious woman bucking under an unrelenting housework regime, saying: "I can't believe I'm f*****g about with a fringe on a f*****g carpet."

We all love to see how the other half live, but Wife Swap reminds us that, actually, we are all in the other half. Utopian dreamers might forlornly hope that the two families learn from the experience, but it's more common that they become defensive and even more entrenched in their particular way of life. Which is probably why, after an hour of exhilarating television, it's perfectly OK to stare wearily at the rolling credits and mumble dejectedly: "Strewth, society is totally screwed up."

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  • Posted on 09 September 2008
  • at 11:53pm
  • by redmutha

we participated in wifeswap,our episode airs on 21st september i think.we are known as the episode where they all get along!despite how it looked on paper i actually was rather fond of my new husband and they claim the experience has saved their marriage.more love than hate in the air!see what we do at www.myspace.com/redmutha

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