Dawn Porter: Extreme Wife

8:35pm – Monday, August 20 on ABC2

On tonight’s final episode of Dawn Porter: Extreme Wife, Dawn’s out to explore the world of Mormon polygamists. Would she be happy sharing her husband with other women? And just how does a polygamist family function.

But before she can immerse herself in their world, she is grilled by a group of senior wives from a well-known polygamist community – Centennial Park, to see if they will allow her to join a family.

Naturally they are protective of their lifestyle, but at the same time they are proud and they agree to let Dawn experience how they live. She gets the okay to spend time with a family of three wives and some 20 children, but the men of the community refuse to appear on camera. By talking to the wives at Centennial Park, Dawn tries to understand why these women are happy sharing a husband between them and just what, in the end, they get out of it.

To get the male perspective on polygamy, Dawn visits a man living like an outlaw in poverty in the Arizona desert with his two wives and looking for wife number three. This lifestyle takes a toll on the women and children and Dawn uncovers the sacrifices people make for this extreme way they live and love.

8:35pm – Monday, August 13 on ABC2

On tonight’s episode, British journalist Dawn Porter travels to Japan to immerse herself in the mysterious world of Geishadom, the art of pleasing men. She gets the rare opportunity to train as a geisha, under the strict tutelage of a renowned madam in Japan’s famous Kyoto district.

But before she immerses herself in the real world of geisha, Dawn visits the raunchier low-rent geishas in the hot springs area, just outside Kyoto, where Japanese businessmen take their clients to geisha parties. Here the geisha pour drinks and entertain the clients with party games, music and dancing. But as the night progresses, things slowly get less refined and more frisky.

After a two hour show, the businessmen share with Dawn their thoughts about geisha and why they visit them time and time again.

Back in Kyoto, Dawn undergoes a physical transformation and a series of gruelling challenges before she is allowed to entertain and try to please top clients (without embarrassing her geisha trainers). Under the watchful eye of the madam (or mother), Dawn learns that the graceful world that is the geisha, is actually more like being in the army and extremely hard work. Along the way, Dawn debunks some of the titillating myths about geishas.

8:30pm – Monday, August 6 on ABC2

Dawn travels to Ukraine to get an understanding of the mail order bride industry, where men and women try to find love in a week. She joins a romance tour called A Foreign Affair – where single western men, mainly Americans, pay thousands to be introduced to potential wives. They fly over to the Ukraine to attend socials, where they get to meet local women who are interested in finding a foreign husband – or are they.

Dawn gets to discuss with some of the men what their expectations are and what type of woman they hope to meet. While some seem genuinely interested in meeting ‘the one’ others have less clear motives and Dawn begins to question their background and character.

In Russia, she also attends a class designed to teach women how to please Western men in the bedroom.

Over lunch, Dawn gets a different perspective from the women as to what they are hoping to achieve by meeting a Western man but also learns about a troubling history of violence in these marriages.

Dawn discovers all is not as it appears to be, as she learns more and more about the men, the women, and an industry that profits from their dreams and fantasies.

8:30pm – Monday, July 30 on ABC2

If you missed it last Wednesday night (July 25th), the first episode of Dawn Porter: Extreme Wife is repeated tonight at 8.30pm on ABC2. In the four-part series, British journalist Dawn Porter explores the alternatives to traditional marriage, making four unique journeys in search of the most extreme ways that women find love and live with men. In tonight’s first episode, Dawn immerses herself in the world of free love. Free love is about having relationships with a multiple number of people, sometimes even whole communities. Dawn travels to California and Germany to find out more.

10:10pm – Wednesday, July 25 on ABC2

British journalist Dawn Porter is 29, gorgeous and single. She’s had plenty of boyfriends, and even a few girlfriends, but no-one she can imagine settling down with and uttering those immortal words, ’til death us do part’. She’s beginning to wonder if traditional marriage is the only way.

In this fascinating four-part series, Dawn explores the alternatives, making four unique journeys in search of the most extreme ways that women find love and live with men.

Dawn starts her adventure by immersing herself in the world of free love or polyamory, and all it has to offer. In other episodes Dawn investigates and exposes the booming mail order bride industry in Russia and Ukraine, and goes inside a Mormon town in Arizona to live with polygamous husbands and wives. She also travels to Kyoto in Japan to train as a real life Geisha girl and learn the fine art of pleasing men.

As Dawn experiences the pros and cons of living in these extreme ways, does she learn anything about the way she’d like to live her life.

In tonight’s first episode, Dawn is out to discover what it’s like to be in a relationship but share partners, when she delves into the world of free love. She initially travels to California to meet a husband and wife who run a free love school, and takes part in role playing and hands on group exercises. Next she flies to Germany to stay in a free love commune where the whole community is committed to the free love lifestyle, but is it all it claims to be? Before she goes, Dawn gets to take part in their most secret group ritual.

11:30pm – Sunday, March 6 on 7TWO

In tonight’s episode: Dawn concludes her exploration of the most extreme ways in which women find love with an investigation of the secretive world of polygamy in the US. While frowned upon in most of the Western world, many wives still find comfort sharing their husbands with other women. In America, Dawn visits a town populated entirely by polygamists, and encounters a family hiding in the wilderness while the husband roams the country in search of a third wife.