Married at First Sight schedule change - why MAFS will be on an hour earlier one day this week and won't be on at all on another

Attention MAFS fans - there are two big changes to the show’s usual airing schedule that you need to be aware of this week (w/c October 6).

Now it’s in to the third week of the airing of the show, we’ve all just about got our heads around the fact the show now airs five days a week, not four as it has done previously, - and will actually be on every Sunday to Thursday on E4 instead of the Monday to Thursday we had come to expect.

Well, now E4 has thrown a spanner in the works and changed the viewing schedule for this week - and not once, but twice.

Firstly on Wednesday (October 8), MAFS will be airing at the earlier time of 8pm, instead of the usual 9pm. The reason for the show being brought ahead by an hour is simple - show bosses don’t want to clash with the new series of The Celebrity Traitors which begins on that night at 9pm on BBC One.

It makes sense that the bosses would rather avoid a ratings war as The Traitors is a hugely popular show. That’s good news for viewers who are fans of both shows as it means you don’t have to decide which show to watch and can easily tune in to both.

However, if you don’t watch The Traitors and the new 8pm MAFS time slot doesn’t work for you then you can just watch at the usual time of 9pm on Channel 4 plus one. If you do that though our advice is to stay off social media between 8pm and 9pm to ensure you don’t accidentally see any spoilers as multiple memes are posted online during the airing of every episode.

The Celebrity Traitors is expected to air every Wednesday and Thursday at 9pm on the BBC up until the beginning of November. The series is made up of nine hour-long episodes so it’s predicted that the finale will air on Wednesday November 5. If that’s the case then we can expect MAFS to stay in the 8pm slot on Wednesdays until that date and then move back to the usual 9pm slot the rest of the episodes until the MAFS finale - which actually won’t be too long after that.

But what about Thursdays? Well, the fate of the Thursday episodes seems very unclear at the moment as there’s no MAFS being show this Thursday (October 9) at all. It doesn’t seem likely that this is because of The Traitors as the show could have been moved to an earlier or later slot to accomodate this as with the day before.

Channel 4 has not commented on why there’s no episode this Thursday as usual, but it could be that the episode count is being reduced from five episodes a week to four episodes a week for the rest of the series to make it last longer. After all, viewers have also become accustomed to MAFS running for eight weeks - but there doesn’t appear to be any additional episodes added in the usual format at the moment so if it continued at the speed it is now it would finish around two weeks earlier than usual.

ITV is also broadcasting the England v. Wales match on Thursday, however, between 7pm and 10.05pm, so it is also possible that Channel 4 bosses have again decided not to compete with another showing that is sure to pull in many viewers. So, this schedule change could be a one off.

The TV guide isn’t available yet for next week, so we’ll have to wait and see what days and times MAFS airs next week, and therefore if the loss of Thursday episodes is temporary or permanent. We’ll let you know as soon as we do.

* MAFS UK will be on E4 tonight and tomorrow (Monday and Tuesday, October 6 and 7) at 9pm, then Wednesday, (October 9) at 8pm, and Sunday, (October 12), at 9pm. All episodes can be watched after broadcast on Channel 4 On Demand.