Good news, everybody: RTÉ is here to save your relationships.

At least, that's the thrust of a new reality show, Then Comes Marriage? (RTÉ One, Monday, 9.30pm), which each week takes three couples away to a country retreat, and there conducts stress tests on their romantic bonds.

This is all done as part of the public service remit, of course, because any whiff of the prurient or exploitative is Febreezed with social statistics and university study quotes, and facilitated by psychologist Allison Keating and psychoanalytic psychotherapist Dr Ray O'Neill – both of whom convey the necessary qualifications, manners and ethics to make co-habitating couples assemble flatpack trampolines together at speed.

“I actually like seeing people start again,” confides Keating, in a lab-test whisper, when one trampoline collapses. It’s an appropriate metaphor: relationships ought to be supportive and, ideally, uplifting, but you suspect these participants have been selected for their obvious potential to come crashing down.

That's the real appeal of the show, because those most likely to benefit from it are viewers whose relationships are founded on the solid basis of judging other couples. They certainly get enough practise. Between First Dates Ireland (RTÉ2, Thursday), the chronicles of wedding mayhem in Don't Tell the Bride or competitive coupledom Six in the City, it is almost possible to watch the love lives of others spark or fizzle, build and implode in real time.

Then Comes Marriage? operates under the assumption that its participants have seen none of those shows – each, in their own way, advertisements for lifelong solitude – and guides them through discussions on communication, sex and intimacy, and – most contentiously – money, not-so-gently aided with tasks, interviews, role play and heart monitors.

Relationships, the psychologists affirm, require the smooth managing of conflicts. Programmes like these, we know, need fire. So how well are the makers and the participants communicating?

I’m no expert, but the moment your partner suggests a few quiet days away together on a psychologist-invigilated reality show is the moment you might reconsider your future together. Clearly, for the couples here it’s a voluntary, mutual decision, and while there may be broad panoply of people attracted to this level of psychological probing and public exposure, is it a coincidence that two of the three couples met each other at a Halloween party?

Perhaps that’s why they don’t spook easily. “I don’t like this,” complains one participant, as a role-play argument leads to tears, “because you’re purposely trying to make us upset.” She’s right. Most anger specialists resist telling an agitated person to “calm down”, because it can have the opposite effect. Here, with an elevated heart rate, a contestant in hot temper hears those words three times before storming out of a session.

How sincere, then, is a show that dispenses its wisdom by asking people to recognise “how similar your shadows are”, or to appreciate that “a relationship is a couple made of two individuals”? Well, let’s look at the relationship between the show’s packaging and its practice. “By the end of the retreat, couples should feel better about a lifelong commitment to each other,” says a cheery voice-over.

Actually, two of them swear off the prospect entirely. You don’t need to be Dr Ruth to agree that’s no bad thing. But participants and viewers, you could do better.