Or is that “pick them with a rose”? Either way - for these women, love is a battlefield, and only one will triumph. Our view The horror writer H.P. Lovecraft was obsessed with the fragility of human sanity when faced with truths too colossal to comprehend. “Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality,” he wrote in 1928's The Call of Cthulhu, “...that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.” Lovecraft was writing about terrifying other-wordly creatures called elder gods, but he may well have been discussing competitive reality romance television, such is the power of The Bachelor Australia to send you screaming for a padded cell.

It's probably all too easy to be snarky about a show that will no doubt delight many viewers with its sweeping romantic ideals and trashy, gossipy reality. But what the hell, let's do it anyway. The conceit of episode one is putting The Bachelor in a cocktail party scenario with 25 women, and getting him to pick 20 of them to continue on through the series. The women, we are repeatedly told by breathless host Osher Gunsberg (formerly known as Andrew G), are all “beautiful”. The word “beautiful” is crammed in wherever possible, and so much so that you start getting suspicious. Dressed to the nines (albeit in almost the same dress), they arrive one by one to meet Australia's debut Bachelor, hoping to make a good first impression.

Their target is Tim Robards, a 30-year-old chiropractor from Sydney who just wants to be loved, sniff. He's got a wonderful family full of great role model relationships, and he's hoping to find his "forever girl" by taking part in a novelty television program. Robards certainly looks the part; tall, with a mop of black hair and a precisely trimmed beard covering his square jaw, and he fills out a suit well. The show takes advantage of Robards' love of adventure and the outdoors to show footage of him sitting contemplatively by the surf, or doing soulful chin-ups as he ponders his bad luck with the babes. Producers have obviously gone for the “nice, sensitive guy” angle, while subtly implying that Robards goes off like a firecracker in the sack. The problem is that Robards seems to be the wettest man in Australia.

When he walks past the pool at “The Mansion”, the opulent sharehouse in which the worthy women will be incarcerated for the duration of this love battle, he blends into its shimmering blue depths. When he strikes up conversations with potential mates in plush grottoes, he's about as charismatic as flat lemonade. The guy is so soggy that any Sao biscuits in a two-mile radius of him would spontaneously flake. One such biscuit is 27-year-old Ali. The doe-eyed Adelaide real estate agent decides immediately that she and Robards are meant to be, and proceeds to stalk him so she can try to teach him some German, her father's native language. She's so desperate for a rose that I'm surprised she didn't pop up and scream “Mein Liebchen!” any time Tim talked to another girl. It certainly looked like she wanted to.

Ali is one of the “hero” characters of the first episode. Another is Laura, a Sydney criminal lawyer who's never had a serious boyfriend. She's painted as endearingly dorky, stumbling in high heels and smearing lipstick all over her teeth. Then there's Judi, a doctor who becomes the first woman to be flowered by Captain Splashpants because she gave him a homemade chocolate rose. “Shire girl” Jolene is quickly turned into the villain, with her peroxide blonde hair and white minidress eerily reminiscent of Basic Instinct's Sharon Stone. Robards is in classic cougar country, and isn't sure what to make of her eager hands and forthright nature. Special mention should be made of Belle, who sounds like Prue and Trude from Kath and Kim and believes in the power of crystals. Tim at least has the decency to look a bit dumbfounded by her gift of rose quartz for his "heart chakra", but it doesn't stop him rosing her up. Make no mistake, everyone on the program seems to have fallen out of the daft tree and hit a few nuts on the way down. But some of them do seem to have a spark of personality - even if it's the kind of spark that might set fire to your house if you cross them.

The whole show is padded out with those one-on-one opinion backstory filler interviews that reality TV loves so much. They're full of incredible insights such as the girls saying “I really want a rose” and Robards commenting that “I think dating 25 women at one time is something very foreign to me”. You see? WET. Throughout the episode, both the women and the camera gaze lovingly at the pile of long-stemmed roses, the receipt of one signifies the woman's suitability to be further assessed as a potential life partner. There's some wider meta-horror there about acceptance of the blood-red rose representing the woman's choice to lose her TV virginity, but it'll take a more academic mind to write that thesis. Eventually it's time for the Rose Ceremony, a solemn occasion in which a man picks women out of a line-up and hands them a flower, which they gratefully receive because approval by a man is still the pinnacle achievement of a woman's life. Dear God is this really happening!

Ali and Laura get through, but Jolene is sent packing back to the Shire and its ready supply of tattooed bros and pre-mixed spirits. In a sentence “There can be only one!” Best bit Jolene sniping at one lucky rose-winner “Aww, she's got back fat”.

Worst bit Realising feminism is dead. Next episode 7.30pm Monday on Channel Ten. This is apparently when the “group dating” starts. Worth watching again?

Those who love trashy reality TV will no doubt already be setting their DVRs or TiVos or IQ boxes or whatever it is people use now instead of videotape. There's an undeniable morbid curiosity about a show like this: you can't hate everyone equally, and so there'll be some women who will get you on side simply because they aren't 100 per cent awful. For me, it was Sherri, a Gold Coast make-up artist. She wasn't featured much in the episode, but she seemed classy and was the only woman with short hair in the entire damn cohort. Honestly, the tyranny of uber long flippy hair has to end. For most of us, long hair is about as sustainable as Atkins. Grade Loading

This is very much up to personal preference. The show is what it is, and it does what it does to a solid A level. But if you'd prefer your horror with meaning, grab some H.P. Lovecraft and get reading.