Is it lying if these women are just jumping to the wrong conclusion? That seems to be the set-up for Fox's new reality show I Wanna Marry Harry, which has a group of young and single America women being introduced to a man who looks very much like Prince Harry. While these women appear aware that they're competing with one another for the affections of an eligible bachelor, they're not told outright who this gentleman is. The above clip shows the competing women witnessing the arrival of a helicopter. This is all part of the rouse that's being established as they're misled into thinking the mystery bachelor is Prince Harry of Wales. He's not. He's just a regular British dude who happens to look a lot like the prince.
I Wanna Marry Harry, which debuts this week on Fox, has Matthew Hicks intentionally misleading these women, though -- as you'll see in the video below -- he doesn't outright tell them he's Harry...
Hicks is in a tricky situation, as he's intentionally allowing the women to assume he's Prince Harry. In fact, that's all part of this set-up, and the series premiere episode works in some stuff about how, on Hicks' end, this is all in an effort to find true love and a woman who cares about him for who he truly is and not the crown they think he wears. It's a stretch, and honestly, it really doesn't make much sense from that angle. Because this isn't a romantic comedy, where true love can be achieved through a series of misunderstandings, a bet or some elaborate rouse... like this one. Real life romance shouldn't begin with a lie. But is this really real life? Or is this just reality TV.
Ten years ago, people might have been convinced that I Wanna Marry Harry is one man's effort to find a woman who loves him for who he truly is, but the genre's been around long enough that viewers should be able to see through that and willingly accept that this is a show about a bunch of women competing for a guy they think is a prince. It's ok to recognize that and still watch, right?
From the first episode, the man who plays the Harry in this situation, Matthew Hicks, seems like a nice enough guy, who's not rich, and who has been mistaken for Harry in the past. In that respect, maybe he's earned himself this opportunity for having to endure the disappointment and eventual disinterest he receives when a woman he's talking to discovers that he's not, in fact, Prince Harry. But he's still deceiving these women, which may not paint him in the most favorable light when all is said and done, depending on how far he has to go with this situation. It's one thing to be mistaken for someone else. It's another to intentionally mislead a woman just to gain her affection. If this series is aiming to go deeper, emotionally, it doesn't show in the first episode, but who knows?
As for the women, they're your typical mix of young, twenty-something American bachelorettes. While they all seem nice enough from the start, things get catty within the first hour of this series. This definitely isn't your typical fairytale love story.
I Wanna Marry Harry premieres on Fox on Tuesday, May 20 at 9/8c.
