A lonely-hearts column for unmarried British farmers has led to rural France being gripped with the promise of passion and controversy after being adapted as a reality television programme.

L'Amour est dans le Pré (Love is in the Meadow), has become one of the most popular shows in France.

Six million people tuned in to the first episode of the latest series this week in what was a remarkable success for the small M6 channel. M6 said that it had beaten the main public and private stations for ratings.

The programme has attracted criticism from French farmers' unions, which said that it gave farming a bad image. The National Federation of Farming Unions said that its members came over as macho characters “who don't have much consideration for women — which is not true”.

The series is based on an idea in the British magazine Country Living, which ran a feature about single farmers entitled Farmer Wants a Wife.

“They work such long hours in such a mechanised environment that they often never see another soul,” Suzy Smith, the editor, said. “In the old days you joined the Young Farmers' Club, you went to the dances, you met a girl, you got married and that was that. Now there is often no time or opportunity for a social life.”

Country Living organised blind dates between bachelors and their suitors at barn dances. “We have had 15 weddings and 10 babies,” Mrs Smith said.

The magazine had to stop its lonely hearts column in 2005 because it could no longer handle the volume of mail.

The concept was turned into a programme for ITV1 but it lasted for only one series. It was a hit in the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Belgium, Austria and France, where it was particularly popular in rural regions.

“I think one of the reasons is that France remains very attached to its agriculture and to its countryside,” a spokesman for FreemantleMedia, the producer, said.

The French candidates include Cécile, 44, a goat breeder and red pepper producer from the Pyrenees; Natael, 26, a goat's cheese producer from central France, and Patrick, 48, a cattle farmer from southern France.

“The women I meet on the internet are often from cities,” Patrick said. “They can't drop everything to come and live on such an isolated farm.”

In a trailer for the show, M6 promised disputes, incomprehension and raunchy scenes. The pledge angered the Co-ordination Rurale, a left-wing farming union, which said that the series portrayed farmers as clowns.

Critics have accepted, however, that the programme has tackled the problem of rural solitude. An estimated 120,000 of the 650,000 farmers in France are single — a rate 30 per cent higher than the French average, according to Le Figaro, the national daily newspaper.

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