Joe Millionaire | |
---|---|
Genre | Reality |
Directed by | Bryan O'Donnell Brian Smith Glenn Taylor |
Presented by | Alex McLeod |
Composer(s) | David Vanacore |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 6 |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) | Chris Cowan Jean-Michel Michenaud |
Producer(s) | Marcia Garcia Tim Piniak Ashton Ramsey |
Running time | 60 mins. |
Production company(s) | Fox World |
Release | |
Original network | Fox |
Original release | January 6 | – November 24, 2003
Chronology | |
Followed by | The Next Joe Millionaire |
Joe Millionaire is an American reality television show that was broadcast on Fox beginning in January 2003. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom that same year. A sequel, The Next Joe Millionaire, followed in October 2003.
The show, approved by Mike Darnell, was successful and became a pop culture phenomenon, with an average of 34.6 million viewers in the United States tuning into the season-one finale, making it the most-watched episode of any reality show since the first-season finale, the second-season premiere, and the second-season finale of Survivor.
The basic premise is that bachelor Evan Marriott has inherited millions of dollars and is searching for a potential bride. He takes a group of hopeful women on several dates to exotic and luxurious locations, eliminating women at the end of each episode until only one woman remains. The main gimmick of the show is that the entire "millionaire" premise is actually an elaborate . The women are not aware that this bachelor is in fact a working-class construction worker. (The Smoking Gun later discovered that Marriott had also been an underwear model for California Muscle.) After all other contestants have been eliminated, the secret is revealed to the last remaining woman. If she decides to stay with Marriott anyway, the couple is surprised with a real check for a million dollars.
A theme throughout the first season was Marriott's attempt to ascertain which of the twenty contestants were sincere and which ones were simply seeking a wealthy mate.Season 1 was helmed by ShowRunner and Co-Executive Producer Liz Bronstein, whose vision of the show as a spoof of the Bachelor and comedic send up of reality shows was widely praised.
The show made a minor star out of Paul Hogan, the manservant whose role developed in the words of the network "into the glue that held the show together". Hogan was not actually the host of the program - Alex McLeod was the program's host, although she appeared only briefly on each episode, for an estimated total of five minutes during the six-episode season.