"I went behind-the-scenes of Australia's wild new dating show The Proposal and God help us."

Witnessing a marriage proposal between two people who have formed a long-term and loving bond can be magical.

Witnessing a marriage proposal between two people who have known each other for less than an hour, have cameras pointed in their faces and have no knowledge of each other’s middle names (or even their last names)  is wildly surreal, and goes against everything we’d been taught to value as a society.

I know this to be true because I’ve seen it happen.

My peek into this new kind of modern love story came when I visited the set of Channel Seven’s new dating show The Proposal, which premieres tonight.

On this episode of Mamamia’s entertainment podcast, The Spill hosts Laura Brodnik and Kee Reece discuss new reality show The Proposal along with the other top stories of the day. 

Now, if the premise of this new reality show sounds odd and has left you asking yourself who thought it would be feasible to have people vow to spend the rest of their lives together while the nation watches on, just remember that these are the same people who brought you The Bachelor franchise.

So it’s fair to say they have a fairly tenuous grip on the need for reality in romance, but their track record of bringing couples together is surprisingly good.

In each episode of The Proposal, a suitor or suitress is hidden from the sight of the contestants who are attempting to win their love. they do this by sitting inside a ‘commitment ring’, which is basically an alien-like dome contraption thing that has been constructed on stage to obscure their entire face and body from view.

The eight contestants who have evidently decided that putting their names down for The Proposal would give them a better chance at love than signing up for Tinder are then put through a series of elimination rounds where the hidden suitor/suitress asks them a series of personal questions.

The group of wannabe rom-com leads are then whittled down to a final two and these lucky kids are then finally allowed to clap eyes on the person whose heart they have been vying for when they emerge from the alien-like cage they’ve been hiding in while dressed in their formal wear.

This next part is where it gets a little juicy because, after some light intervention from the suitor’s family or friends, this is the moment when someone is able to drop down on one knee to propose marriage and let me tell you… this is not actually a joke. People legit pop the question while the audience cheers and after witnessing it with my own eyes I will never be the same again.

While the concept of The Proposal is a bit out of the box (or at least it would have been a few years ago, before we gorged ourselves on Married at First Sight and The Bachelor) the people who step onto the stage to look for a spouse are just everyday Australians, and some of them have had a bit of a rough road on the way to finding love.

Kate, 35, from Brisbane received a breast cancer diagnosis in October 2017 and now that she’s in remission the pub manager has vowed to “live in the moment and take crazy chances’’.

Gary from Grafton has completed 12 years of military service – including two tours of Iraq – and the 34-year-old says he’s “now looking lover, not a fighter” while single mum Jess has devoted her entire life to raising her two daughters and now at 34 is ready to give love a second chance.

The Proposal is wildly cheesy reality TV, but it also might be actually what your soul needs right now.

The Proposal airs tonight on Channel Seven at 8.30pm, you can also watch on 7plus. 

For more stories like this, you can follow Mamamia Entertainment Editor Laura Brodnik on Facebook.  You can also visit our newsletter page and sign up to “TV and Movies”  for a backstage pass to the best movies, TV shows and celebrity interviews (see one of her newsletters here).