But you might also argue the opposite. That these rapid-fire romances are the pinnacle of advanced capitalist society, brilliant expressions of Efficiency and Productivity, the ideal couple of the modern age.

Think of Married at First Sight (Nine, Sun-Wed, 7.30pm), where the bride and groom meet for the first time at the altar; none of that messy business of getting to know each other before getting hitched. They've outsourced all that nonsense to the experts (think of them as the McKinsey consultants of the emotions), who promise to match them perfectly with The One. Let's just not dwell too much on their success rate: one successful coupling in three seasons so far.

This time, they've stepped things up. We now have 10 couples, which slightly increases the chance of the experts not looking like complete duds. Then again, the producers seem to have abandoned any pretence of happy-ever-after in favour of outrageous entertainment: we have psycho ex-girlfriends, male strippers, leggy blonde twins, runaway brides.

It's all marvellously entertaining but it looks more and more like a parody of the genre. So much so, in fact, that the cast and crew of UnREAL (Stan, streaming), which brilliantly and hilariously skewers the cynical manipulations of the genre, must wonder when they will get their redundancy notices.

Who, back in the innocent days of Perfect Match, would have imagined the promise of a dirty weekend on Hamilton Island might produce so many offspring? Who could have imagined that romance, love and sexual compatibility could be sliced, diced and sold to us in so many different packages? But then love, or its simulacrum, is the ultimate commodity.

Last year, Seven gave us Kiss Bang Love, in which people were blindfolded and led to a stranger, also blindfolded, and asked to pash. Yes, it was appalling, but fascinating too. Surely I wasn't the only one transported back to a darkened teenage bedroom and the fervent hope that a game of spin the bottle might deliver my one true love to me (hello, Cathy Jones)?

Undressed (SBS, Mondays, 9.30pm) takes the fetish for fast-forward flings even further with its mash-up of the "dating experts" of Married at First Sight and the enforced intimacy with a stranger of Kiss Bang Love. There's even a bit of the nowhere-to-hide element of the Dutch dating show Adam Meets Eve, in which the daters first eyeball each other on a beach in the altogether.

Here, they turn up clothed and follow a bunch of instructions on a large screen, almost the first of which is "undress each other". At least they get to keep their underwear on. A bunch of "probing" questions – what was your childhood like; what are the pitfalls of modern dating; what issues do you feel most strongly about; how do you feel about sex on the first date – are interspersed with more orders from Big Brother. Do this yoga position. Hug each other for one minute. Kiss each other. It's dating as George Orwell might have imagined it.

At the end of it all, they each have to decide if it's a yes or a no to seeing each other again. A double yes, and the lights go out, with the screen coyly promising "We'll leave you alone". The wait for the digital dice to roll and reveal is agonising for viewers and participants alike.

I'm not sure I could go into bat for these shows in terms of quality, worthiness or their ability to make you feel good about humanity. But my goodness they are fascinating – as social experiments, as examples of game theory in action, as studies of personality types. And maybe, just maybe, as studies of what makes a relationship work, or not.

Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin