Colin Sheridan: Harm caused by reality TV is increasingly hard to ignore

This entertainment model increasingly appears dependent upon emotional destabilisation, sexual exposure, and psychological risk

Channel 4 has removed previous seasons of ‘Married at First Sight UK’ from its streaming platforms while reviews and investigations continue. File picture: PA

There are few more humiliating sentences a grown man can write in a national newspaper than this: I have watched an irresponsible amount of reality television. Not anthropologically. Not in the way people claim to watch it “ironically”, as though they are conducting a doctoral thesis on lip filler and attachment disorders. I mean properly watched it.

Entire lost weekends surrendered to The Bachelor. Grim winter evenings dissolved into the lacquered emotional warfare of Made in Chelsea.