Married at First Sight AXED by Channel 4 following review into sexual misconduct allegations

Chief executive Priya Dogra announced that the already-filmed sixth season will not be broadcast. A planned spin-off, Second Married at First Sight – which would have paired contestants from both the British and Australian editions for another attempt at finding love – has also been abandoned after being paused during the review process.

The funds previously earmarked for Mafs UK will be redirected towards commissioning new content. Channel 4 said the money would be used to develop “bold, innovative new programmes from the UK independent production community”.

The Panorama investigation, broadcast in May, brought forward accounts from three women about the men they had been matched with on the programme.

Two of the participants alleged they were raped by their on-screen husbands, while a third – Shona Manderson, the only woman publicly identified – accused her partner of sexual misconduct. All three men have denied the allegations.

One woman described being raped by her on-screen husband and threatened with an acid attack. Another reported her alleged rape to both Channel 4 and production company CPL before her episodes went to air, yet the footage was still broadcast.

Each of the three women accused the programme of failing to adequately safeguard them.

In June, a male cast member was arrested on suspicion of rape. Neither the individual nor the alleged victim is being named.

Ofcom has also opened its own investigation into the programme.

The review comprised two strands. Law firm Clyde & Co scrutinised how Channel 4 and CPL handled the allegations when they first emerged, examining 31,172 documents alongside 20 hours of aired and unaired footage.

It concluded that welfare protocols were compliant with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code and found no breach of the Code in how concerns were addressed.

Nevertheless, the review identified isolated cases where the welfare framework was not properly followed. In one instance, contributors who broke rules around “prohibited substances” received warnings rather than being removed from the show.

The second strand, conducted by former BBC One controller Lorraine Heggessey, raised concerns that certain aspects of the format could “implicitly put pressure on contributors to be intimate” and that participants risked becoming “dependent on production and lose touch with reality”, impairing their “decision-making”.

Ms Heggessey recommended scrapping Intimacy Week and Partner Swap Week, and revisiting how often couples were questioned about physical aspects of their relationships.

Ms Heggessey’s review also recommended altering the show’s commitment ceremony mechanism so that a participant who wished to leave would no longer be compelled to remain for an additional week if their partner chose to stay.

Despite Ms Heggessey concluding that the welfare protocols were “extensive, extremely thorough and of a high standard” and that continued production would be reasonable with adjustments, Ms Dogra determined that the necessary changes would be too transformative.

She said: “The recommendations are eminently sensible and feasible, but considering their wholesale implementation provoked fundamental questions about the editorial proposition of a show that, I believe, has now run its course over 10 years.”

Adopting the recommendations would require a “materially greater level of intervention, monitoring and supervision that would fundamentally alter the format and editorial proposition of the programme”, she argued.

Addressing the three women, Ms Dogra said she was “very sorry for the distress those women have clearly felt”.

Ms Dogra thanked all those who had contributed to the programme over its decade-long run, noting that staff had made “significant efforts to protect the welfare of contributors”. She added: “Channel 4 has always thrived on reinvention and this is a moment to kickstart a new era of creative renewal.”

CPL, the independent production company behind the series, said it accepted Channel 4’s decision. The company highlighted the Heggessey review’s finding that its welfare protocols were of a standard “from which other productions in the industry have learnt”.

“CPL has always put contributor welfare at the heart of its programme making and will continue to do so,” the company said, adding that it looked forward to future collaborations with Channel 4.

Only a summary of the review’s findings and recommendations has been made public; the full report has not been released. Channel 4 stressed that neither strand of the review had the authority to rule on the allegations themselves, which “remain a matter for the relevant authorities”.