Married at First Sight UK fans aren't going to be pleased by the big change coming to the E4 dating show
Married at First Sight UK viewers are going to be fuming by the latest decision by show bosses.
MAFS viewers have had to get used to several big schedule changes since the show returned for its 10th series at the end of September.
First, bosses seemingly decided at last minute to change the number of episodes every week - going from the expected four days a week, as set by the pattern from previous series, to five days a week, with an additional episode airing on Sundays.
Viewers just about got their head around that in the first couple of weeks of the show airing, and then earlier this week there was a time change for an episode. Last night (Wednesday October 8), the new installment went out at 8pm instead of the usual 9pm. This was to avoid a clash with the launch of the new series of The Celebrity Traitors, which began on BBC One.
This change looks likely to continue till the latest series of The Traitors ends, which is expected to be on November 5.
But, now it seems bosses have decided to make another huge change with no warning - and it relates to Thursday night episodes, starting tonight (Thursday October 9). There is no episode of MAFS on at all this evening - and very sadly it doesn’t appear to be a one -off decision.
The Celebrity Traitors is on every Wednesday and Thursday for the next few weeks, but even so it doesn’t seem likely that tonight’s MAFS has been cancelled as the show could have been moved to an earlier or later slot to accomodate this as with last night.
There was also the possibility with tonight’s episode that it has been cancelled in light of the England v. Wales match which is being shown on ITV between 7pm and 10.05pm.
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 a week or two weeks earlier than usual.
This does seem to be a likely reason as a look ahead at the TV schedule reveals that there also isn’t an episode of MAFS on next Thursday either (October 16).
It appears that MAFS producers could taking away the extra installment almost as soon as they’ve introduced it, and that’s sure to leave fans fuming.
The viewing schedule isn’t available yet for subsequent weeks so it’s not possible to tell if this is part of a bigger trend or not, but it does seem likely that this could be the start of having to get used to only having four episodes of MAFS a week again. . .
* Married at First Sight UK next airs on Sunday (October 12) on E4 at 9pm. Watch previous episodes now on Channel 4 On Demand.