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‘Fake farms’ and the magic of television

Seven concedes Victorian farms portrayed in Farmer Wants a Wife were shot in NSW, due to Covid restrictions.

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Sometimes referred to as “The magic of TV”, filming of Farmer Harry’s supposed Kyabram farm on Farmer Wants a Wife was revealed this week to have taken place in Gloucester, NSW, more than 900 kilometres away.

The Herald Sun reported a local viewer twigged that a lush river setting and picturesque scenes with mountains in the background could not have been filmed in Kyabram.

Seven confirmed the details, but said the show was not deceiving viewers nor Harry’s would-be partners.

“Due to Covid, part of Harry’s Farmer Wants A Wife journey was filmed on a dairy farm near Gloucester,” Seven said in a statement.

Farmer Will’s farm in Berriwillock in northwest Victoria was also doubled by a property in Trangie in New South Wales. Farmer Paige was filmed at  a “stand-in” farm -she works as a station hand on a New South Wales property but doesn’t own a farm.

“Due to Covid, part of Will’s Farmer Wants A Wife journey was filmed on a farm in NSW. Will returned to his farm for the latter part of the series,” a Seven spokesperson told Daily Mail.

“In addition to Farmer Will and Harry (pictured), Farmer Paige used a ‘stand-in’ farm as she’s a first-generation farmer and doesn’t own a farm.

“Farmer Ben and Benjamin were located on their actual properties for the filming.”

Last year Woman’s Day also reported a resident of Orbost, Victoria, was likely not filming at their local pub with 2021’s Farmer Matt.

“I live in Orbost and I can tell you that the pub on tonight’s episode is definitely not the pub in Orbost,” she wrote.

“We have one pub here and one in Marlo, 10 minutes down the road, and neither of those were in tonight’s episode! The date Matt took the girl on, to a winery, wouldn’t be within 100km of Orbost either.”

With so many border closures over the past two years it’s not unreasonable that producers have taken steps to draw upon some smoke and mirrors in order to get work completed. Keeping cast and crew healthy was doubtless a much bigger priority.

But with vaccinations high and borders having lifted let’s hope this isn’t maintained.

Even viewers of 10’s Hunted were questioning come shots of local sites purporting to be locations in Victoria.

Reality TV as a genre was always supposed to be about capturing what is ‘real’ for better or worse.

8 Responses

  1. To be fair (on one aspect) Paige clearly stated in the first episode that she was a farm hand and not an owner.

    It has always been weird on this show that the farms are run single-handedly by the farmers, apparently, who are easily able to take long “dates” and leave the farm to go to dances, camping trips and fancy dinners in Sydney. Just make sure the milk cows know that they will have to hold on for a few days!

    I am not sure this show will ever work now for a female farmer. Poor Paige was scuttled by modern attitudes, so her candidates just didn’t know how to approach her without violating some unspoken taboo.

  2. Its a shame . As the marketing behind this particular program pushed the theme that is it with real people, looking for real love.Pushing that participants were not trying to get a television career out of it. Hence the underlying theme is honesty.
    That this show is meant to be of a higher quality to the other run of mill “find love shows”
    I did find that Will’s farm seemed a little unrealistic for a young farmer. But what really made me think that all is not what it seems. Was when Harry was packing for his last 24 hour date. He opened his free standing wardrobe and there was just one shirt hanging there. Thought that was very strange. Could understand if that was one of the contestants. Bad editing guys.

    1. I noticed the shirt too. But none of the previous farmers or candidates have secured tv careers (just a few ad appearances during the next season) so it does retain some credibility compared to the hook-up competitions.

  4. Did they really think they would get away with this in the age of the internet? What they did was dictated by public health orders so they had no choice. The cover-up is the problem. Why not just say Y is not able to reside on their farm because of COVID restrictions, so they are living on similar farm and hoping to return to their farm ASAP. And the X is farmhand who is looking to own their own farm some day soon. Reality TV is not about reality, its about contrived, cleverly edited depiction of people pitted against each other in some sort of contest. It isn’t even entirely unscripted because producers influence things. The Bridge though is real because it isn’t trying to pretend is something else.

  5. Are they trying to lose viewers? As long as viewers tolerate fakery and are easily entertained, they’ll try to get away with it. But getting caught out is also bad publicity in itself, so it’s not worth it. It might have been better to explain on the show and be honest instead of pretending.

  6. Surprise surprise not really anything for ratings even “duping” viewers. What next, sensationalism ropes masses in. Thumbs up good one Mike totally agree. Glad I’m not the only one with the same opinion.

  7. Nothing surprises me about the tricks and subterfuge that reality Tv producers and networks go through to fool the public who swallow and consume this so called reality programming.

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