I SPENT all weekend binge-watching a reality TV show called Love is Blind on Netflix. The show has been sneered at by critics – it’s trash, they say, it’s manipulative, it’s gaudy, empty, it’s exploitative, it’s voyeuristic, it panders to narcissism. It’s cruel and meretricious.

Yes, it’s all of those things – it’s hard to find any reality TV show which doesn’t immediately seem merely glittering and hollow.

But amid the gaudy trash, there’s real gold. Watching Love is Blind is like observing a live vivisection of modern love, of modern romance – of the way we search for love, of the value we put on love, of what we want from love, of what it means these days to fall in love.

The Netflix series puts love on the operating table and opens it up to find out what makes it tick in the 21st century.

The premise of the show is this: can you fall in love with someone without ever meeting them face to face. And here’s the kicker – if you do fall in love, will you get married within the month? 

The mechanics of the show see 15 men and 15 women, who’ve never met, live separately from each other. They never see each other or come into physical contact with one another.

However, the participants are able to talk to each other constantly in private rooms partitioned by opaque glass that cannot be seen through. So they can hear each other, listen to each other, talk and laugh, flirt and fall out – but they can never see what the other person looks like.

Couples quickly start to pair up. Some hit it off right away, others instantly don’t attract each other. It doesn’t take long before real emotional attachments develop. And of course, the producers fuel the flirting with plenty of free and disinhibiting alcohol.

After 10 days, the show moves into a new stage. If any of the couples think they’ve fallen in love and could spend the rest of their lives together, then now is the time to say so. 

Almost half the couples paired off – out of 30 people who took part in this strange experiment, 12 got together. 

But they didn’t just get together – they got engaged. To be married. And that marriage is coming in less than a month. At this point, the couples still haven’t seen each other in the flesh.

Finally, six couples get to meet in person. There’s tears and hugging and kissing and promises of everlasting love. But for some it’s clear there’s no physical attraction at all. 

All six couples head off to Mexico for a holiday – and to see if protestations of love can become physical love. The bottom line is: will they have sex?

The answer is that most do, but some don’t. And it’s painful to see how this lack of intimacy eats away at strong friendships which had been built on personality not looks.

Once the holiday is over, it’s time to try living together. This is were the cracks really begin to show – where the glamour and thrill of falling in love are replaced by the daily demands of sharing your every waking hour with someone who’s still essentially a stranger.

Then it’s time to meet the parents, to work out where to live. Who will make compromises over their career? Who wants a child? Who doesn’t?

As the weeks tick away, there’s only one challenge left – to make it to the altar. 
I finished the series last night. Do they all marry? Well, I don’t want to give any spoilers away but I suppose in some cases love can be blind – in other cases love has very clear 20-20 vision.

The contestants are all millennials. No-one is over 40. Netflix, of course, is able to navigate the millennial hive mind like no other part of our media or culture – its producers, directors and writers seem to intuitively know how millennials tick, what appeals to them, and what they need.

And so what makes Love is Blind so fascinating is how the series focuses on romantic isolation. It seems to be saying that at its heart the millennial generation is lonely. And that is genuinely saddening.

The participants in the show were all desperate for love. Love has been hard to find for them.

The show felt like a subconscious rejection of the dating app, of the inhumanity of swiping left and right for love and romance and sex. The contestants have spent their lives behind screens.

Dating apps are about one thing: the purely physical – is a potential partner good enough looking. The true personality of others goes undiscovered. Love is Blind reverses that, and it’s neatly subversive.

Once upon a time all of us either met our partners at school, in our neighbourhoods, at college or university, at work, or in pubs and clubs. Today, community is fading away like leaves in winter. 

Love is Blind seemed to pity a generation dealing with the challenges of falling in love at a time when many are unsure what the rules are anymore, or even where to find love or how to find love, of a world where office romances might be frowned upon by HR or college flirting misconstrued.

It’s a rare emotion to feel these days, but Love is Blind reaffirms common humanity. The participants dealt with all the problems that have come with falling in love down the ages – money, family, bigotry. 

And all the joys: finding a partner in crime, devotion to another person, unconditional support.

And when it came to the battle of the sexes both were as bad, and as good, as each other. Men failed, men were kind; women failed, women were kind.

This reality series shows that what’s changed in this constantly changing age isn’t love itself. Love has mercifully remained the same, it’s the one essential part of what we are which makes us human. What’s changed is the way we look for love, find love, and fall in love.

This is love in the time of the coronavirus. We’re inherently social creatures but the digital world is shutting us away from one another. Self-isolating. That’s not just a threat to love, but to what it means to be human.

Neil Mackay is Scotland’s Columnist of the Year.