Last week I stared into the depths of human inanity and saw what I can only assume was propagandist displays promoting misogyny.

Yes, I watched Four Weddings. Actually, to be correct, I watched it twice. Once was the UK version on a channel I barely knew existed: Lifestyle You. The other was the Australian version on Channel 7.

The premise is to take four of the whingiest, most self-centred and borderline pathological brides-to-be available and send them to each other’s weddings to judge and score them.

At the end of the show, the bride with the highest score wins a trip to the cheapest international destination without a current civil war (or an annulment to equal or lesser value).

If you’re thinking: Hang on, is this really a show in which four women get to judge each other’s celebration of love and commitment, taking something personal, making it public and then metaphorically beating it until it metaphorically bleeds all over the hired, starched, linen chair covers? You’re right.

I’ve always had a problem with the concept of “Reality Television”. It’s always been either documentary or game show to me. Reality has nothing to do with it. Four Weddings, for all its glimpses into other people’s wedding receptions, is just a very boring and low-stakes game show. The only attempt at entertainment value comes from how horrible any of the women can be about other women’s dreams.

Men are either forgotten in the entire process or made to look like useless appendages who have added nothing to the concept of the celebration. So maybe it’s not just misogyny. Maybe it’s an exercise in full-blown misanthropy.

Nobody leaves Four Weddings with their dignity. As soon as people opened their personal dreams to the concept of performance and competition, they sold the specialness of their day and will need to wear that as a memory of their lives together for as long as that lasts.

Forget Wipeout. Four Weddings is the show that brings us closer to Stephen King’s Running Man than ever before. It’s not car crash TV. It’s the mass-slaughter of societal decency.

Is that too dramatic?