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New 'Bachelor': Barnyard beau

By Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published April 29, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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Krista and Brooke, two contestants on the new reality show Farmer Wants a Wife, try their hands at chasing chickens.

Photo by Greg Gayne / The CW

Krista and Brooke, two contestants on the new reality show Farmer Wants a Wife, try their hands at chasing chickens.

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Farmer Wants a Wife

* When and where: 8 p.m. today, the CW

If Dante were writing The Divine Comedy today, his seventh circle of hell would probably include a room where people watched romantic reality shows: The Bachelor, Boy Meets Boy, Beauty and the Geek, Tila Tequila et al.

No doubt Farmer Wants a Wife, the CW's latest entry in the category, would be included. It plays like a cross between The Bachelor and Green Acres. Think: Pimp My Barn.

The conceit finds a hunky Missouri farmer named Matt, 29, wanting to climb down off the tractor and meet the girl of his dreams. Since there are obviously no eligible candidates in Portage Des Sioux, Mo., the producers kindly import 10 lovelies from big cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Ontario.

Matt flirts with the women and introduces them to farm life. When he's not around, the women huddle inside a nice little farm house and carp like sorority sisters trapped in a grain silo. Half of them are impressed with Matt's washboard abs. The other half are mildly annoyed that they're being asked to do such things as - gasp! - catch a chicken and put it in a cage. What's next? Shoveling manure? (You can bet that'll happen sometime this season.)

The women are a mostly charming lot, but some, apparently, didn't read the show prospectus. Like Josie, 25, from Laguna Niguel, Calif. The Playboy cybergirl struts around like she's a hottie when, in fact, she's closer in appearance to a holstein. She flunks the first "challenge" (catching chickens), griping that she's a lady and ladies don't catch their own food.

From the moment Josie appears on screen, you'll be wondering how long before someone bashes her in the head and plants her in the back 40. I guess every show needs a villain.

The girls list their interests as everything from shoe shopping to "sleeping with my skunk." Don't ask.

To the producers' credit, the group of women is multiracial, and they're mostly good sports. Still, the show turns not just on who can cozy up to Matt, but on how catty the women can be with each other when their potential husband isn't around.

They grouse about how self-indulgent big-city men are. Apparently chivalry is dead. The chance to snag a man close to the earth - Matt grows corn, wheat and soybeans - is enough to make them want to leave Starbucks far behind.

Or is it?

At the end of each show Matt sends one girl packing. On tonight's premiere, the loser learns her fate by reaching into a chicken coop. The woman who doesn't find an egg inside is a goner.

In solidarity with their unknown fate, all the women wear black for the final elimination. It's as if they're attending the funeral of creativity.

Cheesy? Absolutely. But still watchable. As the season wears on, expect more comments from the townsfolk about that "nice boy" living with those 10 women.

Farmer Wants a Wife caters to our worst TV viewing instincts: reality show triteness coupled with sexual tension.

If things don't work out for Farmer Matt, he can always ask the Farm Bureau to include mail-order brides in next season's catalog.

pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592

Hay, there!

The notion of city slickers stumbling into rural pastures is not a new conceit for TV. Here are four other shows that employ the children-of- the-corn ethos for entertainment value.

* Heidi's Stud Farm: In the fall of 2005, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss announced a new reality show centered on an all-male luxury bordello on a 60-acre ranch 80 miles outside Las Vegas. Fleiss said she got 500 e-mails from men seeking employment. (You can still apply via the stud farm Web site.) HBO is filming a documentary on the building of the brothel. No word on when or if the reality show will ever see the light of day.

* The Simple Life: Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie took their socialites-on-the-loose reality show to Arkansas farm country for its first season in 2003. The premise was based on Green Acres and proved a modest hit.

* Little People, Big World: The Learning Channel offers this reality show, which depicts life on a 34-acre Oregon farm owned by Matt and Amy Roloff, a married couple who are both 4-foot-2-inch-tall dwarves. The Roloffs have four children, three of whom are normal size and one who is a dwarf. The show airs at 6 p.m. Mondays on TLC. It's popular enough to get the stars on Oprah.

* Green Acres: The original farm comedy still airs at 6 a.m. Saturdays on TV Land. The Douglases - earthy Oliver (Eddie Albert) and his upscale wife Lisa (Eva Gabor) - leave the glamour of New York City for rural life. Enter Arnold the pig and an assortment of country characters, including adopted son Eb. The show originally ran on CBS from 1965-1971.