Channel 7 has a new reality show called First Dates. It's voyeuristic heaven.

In a television landscape pockmarked with the scars of defunct reality dating shows past — not to mention the fresh blemishes of Farmer Wants a Wife, The Bachelor franchise, and Married at First Sight — you could be forgiven for thinking the genre’s definitely been done.

You would be wrong.

First Dates premiered on Channel Seven last night, the Aussie version of a show that’s already a hit in the UK, where it began.

Imagine some of your own first dates: the one where you drank too much and cried at the dinner table; or the one where he talked about his ex the whole night; or that time you kissed and his tongue was like an angry eel in your mouth.

This show captures all of these moments in their awful glory.

The best thing about this reality show is that it’s real — in that there are no competitions or challenges, no “intruders” or “moles”, no intrusion by the producers at all, beyond casting the singletons for their dates.

There are no cameras hovering around the couples, either. They’re filmed by cameras that are remotely around the restaurant so as not to distract the couples from their interactions with each other.

“First Dates allows us to observe human behaviour in its purest form. This is a series about people’s lives, their stories, the diversity of a country — these factors are played out through the prism of dating and the universal feeling of wanting to love and be loved,” a Channel Seven press release tells us.

It’s just a whole load of first dates that like in real life, run the gamut from adorable to unbearable.

The nervous first daters arrive at the restaurant, at Verandah in Sydney, to be greeted by the bartender, who’s going for a confessional, seen-it-all vibe — the classic barkeep trope.

The couplings are great: there’s the well-matched in Aiden (“I like island girls”) and Emily (“I’m an island girl”), to the complete opposites in Corbin (“Hi, I’m Corbin”) and Lauren (“I’ve definitely had those days where like most women where I felt like dating may just never happen, that I may die alone, that I’m gonna be living with 10 cats, and that no-one will know that I’ve died because the cats would’ve eaten me”).

Then there’s the nervous Nicholas Nicholas (yeah, that’s his actual name) who manages to forget the name of his ever-patient date (Danni) and smarmy Chris and hilarious Sicilian Caterina.

Until next week #FirstDateAU family, remember the moral of tonight’s episode! pic.twitter.com/ePGsAzJfog

— FirstDatesAU (@FirstDatesAU) February 3, 2016

They eat, they drink, they talk, and we watch. The bill situation is different on every date. To split or not to split?! The best bit? They have to sit next to each other while they tell the camera whether or not they want a second date.

“After 4 minutes of looking into somebody’s eyes, apparently many things are supposed to happen.” pic.twitter.com/uC873pO8rO — FirstDatesAU (@FirstDatesAU) February 3, 2016

If you’re the type to be out on dinner and notice a couple making small talk and desperately trying not to get pasta sauce on their fronts and feel the need to surreptitiously monitor their date all night, you will love this trainwreck of a show.

It’s pure entertainment. And the best thing is, it’s not happening to you.