If you had the chance to be on a reality show like Dating in the Dark would you do it?

Popular dating game shows were an innovation of TV producer Chuck Barris in the 1970s. The Dating Game, his first, put one unmarried man behind a screen to ask questions of three women who are potential mates, or one woman versus three men - thus hearing their answers and voices but not seeing them. The audience could, of course, see them all.

The various suitors were able to describe their rivals in uncomplimentary ways, which made the show work well as a general devolution of dignity. Questions were often obviously rigged to get ridiculous responses, or be obvious allusions to features of the participants' privates. The Newlywed Game, by contrast, another Barris show, had recently-married couples competing to answer questions about each other's preferences.

The couple who knew each other the best would win. Sometimes others got divorced. Once, someone divorced after appearing on the Newlywed Game got a "second chance" on the Dating Game.

Gimmicks were the lifeblood of all such shows. This drew criticisms for instigating disaffections that could not have been effected. The genre waned for a while but The New Dating Game and the UK version Blind Date revived it, and the old shows were popular in reruns, unusual for any game show.

Cable TV revived some interest in the 1980s and 1990s and eventually new shows began to be made along the old lines. Gay variations began to appear on a few specialty channels. Other shows focused on the conventional blind date, where two people were set up and then captured on video, sometimes with comments or subtitles that made fun of their dating behaviour.

He Said, She Said focused not on setting up the date, but on comparing the couple's different impressions afterwards, and for their cooperation offering to fund a second date. These resembled the reality shows that began to emerge at about the same time in the 1990s. Temptation Island, where long-standing heterosexual couples were deliberately separated and made to watch each other's mates interacting romantically on and after dates, making extensive use of video which is the only means by which they could communicate on the island.

The Fifth Wheel, where four people, two of one sex and two of another, are allowed to meet and bond slightly, but then a fifth wheel of one or the other sex, but always a heterosexual, enters and attempts to break up the equilibrium.