Seven spouses for seven culchies: Love stories, the rural Ireland way

Love in the Country began on Monday on RTÉ2. “Finally,” says you, “a documentary series about dogging.” It is, in fact, the Irish iteration of a terrifyingly titled international franchise The Farmer Wants a Wife and it involves former camogie player Anna Geary tackling rural depopulation with a camera crew from Dublin in their customary top hats, ball gowns and monocles (I’ve been to the RTÉ canteen, I know what they’re like).

I picture the meeting at which this show was devised, where the commissioning team – dressed like 19th-century explorers in safari suits and pith helmets – stand with confusion on front of a map of Ireland. In this map, Dublin is very big and the rest of the country is filled with question marks, sea serpents and confusing pictures of Marty Morrissey re-enacting the Stations of the Cross. They summon the RTÉ rural affairs department up from the basement (Cork) – Marty Morrissey, Dáithí Ó Sé, Peig and the Morbegs – and gesturing to the bits outside of Dublin they ask: “What’s going on here?”

Morrissey, Ó Sé, Peig and the Morbegs fill them in on the benighted provinces and the plight of the doomed wretches who live there. Once the management team have finished laughing hysterically at their accents (“Say Renault again!”), they are appalled by what they hear and weep sad, vaguely English tears. “We have to do something to help these wretched people!” they cry and, handing over the last of the cash left after Tubridy cleared the place out, they point Anna Geary in the direction of “the country” and say: “Sort it out, please.”

No better woman, to quote my fellow culchies. Yes, for the purposes of this article picture me with my trousers held aloft by bailing twine, planning an office park on a floodplain and swigging from a warm jug of Lilt (my wife accuses me of being a culchie whenever it suits me – Schrodinger’s Culchie – and, in fairness, she’s not wrong). Geary is soon sweeping into the lives of lovelorn farmers being warmly inquisitive about their lives. We see a montage in which various farmers hold lambs alluringly and say things like: “My dream is to have two donkeys.” This should put things into perspective for you if, like my Dublin-born nephews, your dream is to own a superior games console and to upset your uncle. It’s also the type of thing that might lure an unsuspecting Dubliner beyond the M50 because they see lambs and donkeys as “cute” and not “dinner”.

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There’s a genuine subtext in Love in the Country about depleted rural communities, isolation and the economics of family farms which makes it all feel a bit more consequential than other dating shows

Our first subject is Alanagh, a trainee vet, barwoman and farmer. This is one of the things that differentiates countryfolk from city dwellers: having more than one job, all of which can be convincing Playmobil figures or Halloween costumes. Dubliners, on the other hand, all have jobs with titles like “digital marketing executive” or “senior network architect” or “blockchain consultant”, things that are hard to illustrate, difficult to explain and of which no child dreams (except possibly your strange children).

Alanagh is likeably smart and funny. She wants a boyfriend who is akin to her sheepdog, Roy, “loyal, dependable; tell him to go away and he does”. On foot of an RTÉ call-out, a number of young men are interested in the role, putting literal pen to literal paper in the manner of our tubercular ancestors. Based on these letters, Alanagh invites a selection to a fancy house for a series of speed dates. They turn up well-scrubbed and in the traditional costume of their people (jeans, brown shoes, mortified and embarrassed heads).

[ Love in the Country: ‘Anyone working in rural Ireland – it is quite difficult to meet someone’ ]

[ Dating post-pandemic: ‘People are desperate for relationships’ ]

It’s rare in this post-reality television era to see so many people who are so clearly uncomfortable with being on television. In fact, it’s not clear all of them realise they are on television. They are men of few words who seem to be trying to evoke, not the conversational sparks of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, but those of Matthew Corbett and Sooty in the Sooty Show. Alanagh must choose three of this taciturn bunch, all of whom must then pass “the mammy test”, meaning they must have tea with her mammy, who casts a cool maternal eye on them, for such are the psychosexual issues of our nation.

Meanwhile, Anna Geary has moved on to “self-proclaimed hunk of prime beef” Rob from west Cork, who has wisely surrounded himself with baby goats. This is a neat trick. Top tip, ladies: if your man keeps leaving the house surrounded by baby goats, he is probably having an affair. Every woman in the land sends Rob a letter of interest, because baby goats are cute and also, probably, tasty.

Rob, like Alanagh, has more than one job: he’s both a farmer and a pharmacist and he must choose between seven women who have overly romantic notions of country life. Unlike Alanagh, who attracted many fellow farmers, Rob’s suitors include teachers, financial directors, dancers and fellow pharmacists. The woman are more vocal than the men, which sometimes renders poor Rob, accustomed to baby goats (who keep their cards close to their chests), relatively speechless. “She nearly provides her own entertainment,” he says of one of his silver-tongued suitors. “I could just listen away, sup a few pints of Guinness and it would be grand.”

Look, there are worse approaches to marriage. Everyone in this programme seems legitimately lovely. And there’s a genuine subtext in Love in the Country about depleted rural communities, isolation and the economics of family farms which makes it all feel a bit more consequential than other dating shows. Like Alanagh, Rob finds himself with a difficult decision to make. “Sure if we could take all of them we would,” he says, stoically, to which I yell, “Take as many as you like! You have land and two jobs. By the standards of the times that makes you a tycoon. It’s the 21st century! Not a court in the land would fault you or Alanagh for having a few extra spouses stashed about the place.”

Okay, our legal experts tell us that this isn’t factually true and that many courts in the land would fault these legends for having extra spouses, but I think we all know that that’s only true in the very strictest legal sense and most of us would just let it go. Anyway, we’ll get some answers and experience even more amorous agribusiness next week.

While Love in the Country is sweet and heartwarming, Fools for Love? (Wednesday, RTÉ1) is a darker story about the unregulated and chaotic world of online dating. It delves into a mire of casual misogyny, romance fraud, online abuse and image-based sexual assault and looks for real answers from experts and regulators. It’s helped enormously by journalist Aoife Moore who brings real intelligence, wit and empathy to her interviews. Still, it might be an idea to follow this up by watching Love in the Country again, where the baby goats and shy, non-toxic farmers might restore your faith in humanity (and goats).