It has begun: Farmer Wants a Wife is back in 2016 with a familiar face.

In Australia, farmers have been wanting wives since white people first invaded this land and inappropriately attired women in corsets fainted from the heat and returned, chastened, to their chilly homeland.

They’ve been wanting wives in a televised, competitive fashion for eight seasons. This, the ninth, sees yet more farmers and yet more potential wives courting one another for our amusement.

In typical Farmer Wants a Wife style, the opening credits see our six new farmers gazing wistfully out across their lady-less properties, stoically riding horses without a woman sitting sidesaddle on her pony beside them, and crying in the shower completing manly farming work without a girl waiting on the verandah to welcome them home with a home-cooked meal.

“For farmers, loneliness is a way of life,” host Sam McClymont intones. “But tonight, love returns to the land!”

Here follows a montage of the farmers all looking somewhat gormless, mouths agape.

According to the Farmer Wants a Wife wardrobe department, all farmers wear Akubras and silver belt buckles. ALL OF THEM.

The producers of this show want you to know that these men are salt of the earth. They are Aussie battlers who deserve wives willing to set aside their own careers and travel to the country to engage in a fight to the bitter end with other women to secure themselves a future of pulling calves from cows’ vaginas, baking pies, and learning about the intricacies of crop rotation.

The show starts with awkward and unnatural banter between the farmers and the host Sam.

Cattle musterer Matt from the Pilbara, WA reckons he’s a bit of a catch. “I’ve got a good heart,” he says modestly.

He lives on a cattle station 1500km from Perth, which it turns out is the most isolated city in the world. He’s only 25, but he’s never actually seen a woman so things are getting desperate.

“Country cutie” is farmer Adam, who hails from Gippsland, Victoria. He’s a dairy farmer who is also 25 and owns his own farm. Sam thinks he’s “adorable”, and I think she needs to keep it in her pants.

Farmer Adam wants a woife in his loife. He’s looking for a “good woman”. Aren’t we all?

We’ve met two of our flannie-and-Akubra clad farmers, so it’s time to meet some ladies. They are making their way to meet the men where they have assemble in the Hunter Valley in NSW, like a an excitable group of women in a hen’s-party bus. They’re edited so as to appear to be constantly reapplying lipstick and playing with their hair, because women.

Next farmer we meet is Julz, who is a single dad from Tumby Bay, South Australia. This farmer has known wifedom, and wants to try it again, only he struggles with romance. He’s a bed farter, clearly. A Dutch ovener.

He’s got a seven-year-old daughter, and they are adorable.

Julz is a wheat and livestock farmer who describes himself as a “colourful character”, which probably means eccentric behaviour when on the cans.

According to his bio piece, he is extremely popular at his local bakery.

He tells Sam he’s “interestingly excited” at being on the show, which makes her dimples deepen in confusion.

Rodeo guy farmer Lance will “walk down any street with the lady I love and hold her hand”. He will do this daring act “even in the main street, I don’t care”.

Woah, way to blow all the other guys out of the water, farmer Lance!

Lance is a Queenslander from Rockhampton, but don’t hold that against him, amirite? LOL. Jks, I have a lot of love for the Queensland people. Some of my best friends are from Queensland.

Sam explains that in the past “Lance has had some trouble holding on to his special ladies”. What she’s saying here is Lance can’t keep a chick, for reasons that I’m sure will become evident.

I think I have the woman for you, Lance.

Farmer Jedd thinks love is “spectacularly powerful”. He hails from the forbidding-sounding Coffin Bay in South Australia, and he farms oysters. This is a bit of a stretch, but you know what? Jedd seems like a cool guy, so I’m just going to accept oyster farming is real farming and move on.

He’s still single at 37, and he thinks it’s because he’s shy. It could be his constant and pervasive odour of seafood, also.

Anyway, there’s a whole song by Diana King about how shy guys are great; it’s called Shy Guy.

Below I will reproduce the pertinent lyrics:

I don’t want somebody/Who’s loving everybody/I need a shy guy/He’s the kinda guy who’ll only be mine.

If that doesn’t prove it, nothing will.

Ah, and they’ve saved the best for last. Our final farmer is the new-nosed Lachlan, 36, from Married at First Sight. His first attempt at TV love failed, so they’ve given him another.

Farmer Lachie enters all cocky-like, with a tight shirt and a bit of a strut.

Now, here’s where things get interesting. He says he was in love with Clare, his “wife” from Married at First Sight. She says au contraire.

“He turned it on when the cameras were on us, then was either cold or rude or distant,” she told New Idea.

“He told me that I was his dream girl and he’d never had a connection like that before, and yet quickly departed after the last cameras, with no word.”

That’s a bad farmer! Does Lachie want a wife, or a TV career? Time will tell. We don’t yet know the outcome of this show, obviously, but it does appear to result in Lachlan no longer being a farmer.

All the farmers meet one another and Lance seems overcome by the celebrity in their midst, shaking Lachlan’s hand vigorously. They all drink beer like good Aussie farmers should.

Forty-eight exotic butterfly ladies, none of whom is wearing appropriate country attire, alight from their party bus, heels sinking into the grass.

All the farmers enter the room down a red carpet and are applauded by the women, accompanied by much shrieking. Only Lance and Lachlan appear to actually enjoy this. Jedd is practically melting into the floor.

Now, because this is a thoroughly “modern” show, they’re going to have a five-minute speed date with each woman (no one’s speed-dated since 2002, Channel Nine) then get rid of four of them. The remaining four? They’ll head back to the farm for 10 days.

Here are some highlights from the speed-dates:

A blonde tells Jedd she’s “shittin'” herself.

Jedd: “I’m an extrovert. But, like, a shy one?”

One woman to Matt: “Got like squat racks and stuff? Aww sick!”

Julz finds a chick who “likes a bit of a shoot”. “I like a bit of a shoot myself,” he tells her. Neither are using euphemisms, as far as I can tell.

Lance just tries to get physical with each woman. Remember how I said the reason for his lack of success with women would become clear?

Then this happened:

TOLD YOU.

He says Lisa is “pretty well composed” and then points meaningfully at his eyes before hugging her in an extremely creepy fashion. I think he’s trying to get at the fact that he likes her boobs.

He also refers to himself in the third person and wants to know that these women are good cooks who will feed Lance well.

Thing is, these women really seem to dig it. Like, genuinely. I’m so confused.

The five-minute dates over, now the farmers have to select their four faves.

“It’s an interesting yellow-brick road that life takes us on,” says Jedd, who I’m noticing is prone to meaningless philosophical statements.

Adam’s choosing Hayley, Kelsey, Christine and Taryn. The other girls are pissed.

Next it’s Julz, who basically gave the thumbs up to each woman and mouthed to the camera, “She’s hot!!”

He wanted them all, but ended up with army girl Megan, Alex, Mel, and Amanda.

WA farmer Matt has been flushed red from the beginning of this process. Each girl thinks she’s in, but only four are right.

They are Gabrielle, Amelia, Anna, and April, who just screams farm girl to me.

Farm philosopher Jedd overcomes his shyness to wax on about how meaningful each of his five-minute dates were.

He chooses — OH GOD, WAIT!

“Sam, I have something to say,” says Meredith.

“I did really enjoy meeting you Jedd. But I’ve been having a bit of a think and I realise that the competitive aspect of this competition isn’t for me. So I wish you the best.”

Respect, Meredith. No woman should have to fight other women for a man. He should just choose her so they can go back to Coffin Bay and eat oysters and have sex together forever.

She had actually been in Jedd’s top four; it is a blow. But he’ll probably be able to work through it via some poetry writing, so he’ll be OK.

He chooses Kerry, Nicole, Chanel, and Samantha — which one was the ring-in?! We may never know.

Now it’s time for our old friend farmer Lachie. All the women in his group make suggestive comments to camera about the staid and kind of inexpressive Lachlan. It’s odd. He’s suddenly started oozing sex appeal since his first reality show foray.

He’s choosing Jessica, Belinda (who kisses him on the lips in thanks), Kelly, and Kate (who felt she should have married him over Clare on Married at First Sight despite not actually having been in the running).

Lance’s ladies all kiss him when they enter the room! What the hell is this? Is it generational?

He chooses Susie, who is really, erm, bubbly? Yeah, I’ll call it that. Next, he chooses Karen, who cries in joy, Lorraine, and of course, the well-built Lisa.

Next week, the real fun begins: a bunch of smart women with careers and lives descend upon a remote property to compete for the love of the thus far unloved farmer who resides there. We have come so far.

We’ll be recapping each week, so stay tuned for the farmers, their potential wives, and that cow-birthing scenario I mentioned earlier.