One of the pleasures afforded by the realist novel is the illusion of intimacy. Alone in the bath or surrounded by others at a party: the novel, at least in theory, can disclose a character in either situation with equal ease. The only thoughts a character can keep to herself are those her author decides not to reveal. From how many people in our actual lives can we expect a similar level of physical, emotional, intellectual access?

The illusion of intimacy was promised also, at least initially, by a certain kind of reality show. Trap a group of participants in a house, limit their access to the outside world, furnish them with alcohol, and turn the cameras on: surely, eventually, the secret truth of the human animal would be captured on film. But even on television the laws of physics pertain: the person under observation is necessarily changed by it. And those who choose to appear on reality television are further transformed by the knowledge of the change that observation can provoke—and also the opportunities that it can provide.

As a naturally anxious person forever worried that her own instinctive behaviors are in fact deviant, I can think of nothing more intriguing, nor reassuring, than the opportunity to intrude so completely on another’s person’s privacy. Unfortunately, the fiction that these programs are capturing anything resembling “reality” is now almost impossible to manufacture. Participants on reality television shows now know both what to expect (isolation, sleep deprivation, misleading edits) and what is expected of them (tears, fights, anything else that might fall under the rubric of “drama”). Consciously or unconsciously, they tailor their behavior accordingly. It sounds like a tautology, but it’s not: only people who want to be on reality television now appear on reality television.

The fifteen men and fifteen women of Netflix’s reality show “Love Is Blind” defy this truism. Each seems driven by what reads as a genuine desire to find a romantic partner. In place of coherent personalities, we have people, various and inconsistent, acting out of fear, or lust, or hope, lying to themselves and others, and developing, in some cases, what appears to be true affection for one another.

Sitting in adjacent rooms that the show and its participants insist on calling “pods,” couples speak to but are unable to see one another. (This makes “Love Is Blind” accidentally perfect for life in the time of a global pandemic. Now that we’re being cautioned to both to distance ourselves physically and keep in touch digitally, watching people communicate in isolation, through an impermeable barrier, looks less like an attention-getting premise and more like our inevitable future.) Across an opaque blue wall—“It looks,” one cast member remarks, “like a scene from ‘Frozen’ ”—over a handful of days, men and women (the pairings are designed to be heterosexual) exchange pleasantries, build intimacy, say “I love you.” Only after a proposal is offered and accepted does a couple get to meet face to face. The wedding dates are set for four weeks later.

The conceit speaks to the state of modern romance. Reading this thoughtful BuzzFeed essay about a man whose boyfriend breaks up with him three days after making their partnership official, I wondered whether getting engaged to someone on camera, sight-unseen, might, in fact, be preferable to enduring app-enabled (and -perverted) rituals of real-world dating. The format guarantees a certain amount of transparency. On another franchise, a cast member may choose to consciously sacrifice sympathy in pursuit of fame; on “Love Is Blind,” if you don’t get engaged, you’re gone by the third episode.

Some combination of these factors has resulted in a show that privileges calm authenticity. A surprising number of the men on “Love Is Blind” turn out to be preternaturally emotionally literate, though they tend to describe their feelings slowly and deliberately, as if submerged under several metres of water, or just emerging from sedation. Lauren, a thirty-two-year-old content creator who pairs off early with Cameron, a twenty-eight-year-old scientist (each cast member is tagged with a precise age and a vague occupation), has the confidence and self-possession to tell her fiancé, the day before their wedding, that she isn’t sure she’ll be able to say “I do” when the time comes. (As it turns out, she was; the couple remains married.)

And, unlike other reality offerings, “Love Is Blind” rewards repeated viewings. I binged the show into the early hours of the morning several days running, desperate to discover each couple’s fate. When I was out of episodes, what I most wanted to do was start over from the beginning. The impulse was similar to the one I have after finishing a textually dense but plot-driven novel: now that I knew how it all turned out, I wanted to go back to pick up the dropped clues I’d missed the first time around.

The cast member for whom my soul aches most is Jessica, a thirty-four-year-old regional manager from Illinois who has burrowed deep down into the dark heart of heterosexist patriarchy and made a home for herself there. Jessica’s relationship to her relationship status is that of a twenty-six-year-old Austen heroine, which is to say: not good. She’s on “Love Is Blind” because she’s “ready to start a family” and “have the most perfect marriage.” In the real world, she admits, her standards have been too high. (“I would only date a guy between one to five years older. I would only date athletes, because I’m really athletic.”) Now she’s ready to lower them.

Jessica quickly finds herself torn between two men: Mark, a twenty-four-year-old fitness instructor, and Barnett, a twenty-seven-year-old engineer. Though she can’t see either, her attraction to Barnett is obvious (she describes his voice as “sexy”), as is her lack of attraction to Mark. When, a few days into the “experiment,” an instantly smitten Mark tests the waters—“You know, I ask you, you know, do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? Like, where’s your mind at?”—Jessica hesitates before venturing that she can see the two of them “walking out of here together.” In his pod, Mark exclaims, in relief, “That’s what I’m talking about!” In hers, Jessica smiles too widely. “That’s the cutest,” she says.

But, after a series of embarrassing reversals, it’s Mark to whom Jessica ends up engaged. First, she takes too seriously a lukewarm commitment from Barnett (“If this place had nobody, no other guys and no other girls, like, I would propose to you tomorrow”), and breaks things off with Mark. “You’re ten years younger than I am,” she tells him. And: “Like, I have created other connections that look like they could potentially plug into my life, you know.” But when Barnett breaks things off with her and proposes to Amber, a twenty-six-year-old former tank mechanic, Jessica tearfully rekindles her relationship with Mark and spends the run-up to their wedding all but gritting her teeth in grim determination. In talking-head conversations with off-camera producers, Jessica stubbornly proclaims her love for Mark. (“Mark has been my rock, and I know that’s the right relationship for me. It’s just been hard for me to accept that.”) On camera, she all but recoils from his touch and takes opportunities to check in with Barnett, to make sure he’s “doing what’s right for you, you know.”