If you feel like a swim in a sea of misery, recriminations and tears, then The Last Resort, which goes to air on Tuesday on Channel Nine, should satisfy you.

It features five couples, taken to a luxury resort in Fiji for a “couples retreat”. They are apparently at the end of their relationship tether and air their tragedies with anger and sadness.

Over four weeks, they face group therapy, confrontations, uncomfortable tasks and the ministrations of psychologist Sandy Rea and relationship coach Michael Myerscough.

And what a voyeuristic and, frankly, unpleasant experience it is – at least in the first couple of episodes.

Sharday, 27, and Josh, 25, are separated.

Sharday: “In order to hurt him, I told him the baby wasn’t his.”

Sarah and Keelan air their grievances. Photo: Channel Nine

Josh: “I met my daughter five weeks after she was born. I never got over that.”

Carl, 37, had an affair with a client in the marital home he shared with Lucy, 38, and their children. He has never expressed regret and she can’t let it go.

Keelan, 24, drinks too much and hangs out with his mates instead of his partner Sarah, 25, who feels lonely and rejected.

Jodie, 34, and Stu, 39, don’t have sex after he suffered an accident.

Dan, 35, dumped Lisa, 37, via Messenger because he can’t deal with confrontation.

The hope and potential seen at the start of relationships (on shows like Married at First Sight) is missing in action. What’s left is relentless sadness and a catalogue of bad behaviour, laid bare for us to watch.

A major format flaw is that these are deep-seated problems with no quick fix and no early redemption for the couples or the audience – despite the optimism of the relationship professionals.

“The first thing I will figure out is who is angry with who, because angry people are not horny people,” says Myerscough.

“I can see the love is still there. I have high hopes we can fix this,” adds Rea.

They will no doubt unleash all of the techniques of their trade, while the producers weave in all of the tried and true reality television tricks.

There are group dinners and couple interviews to generate judgment and bitchiness.

Separate activities for the men and women establish bonds and enable everyone to speak freely – presumably for the comments to be replayed later in the series for the inevitable “moment of truth” revelation.

These couples are obviously desperate to save their partnerships to put themselves through this – but at what cost in the longer term?

This will never be a family video that gets dragged out every Christmas so the kids can laugh at daddy’s adultery, lack of sex drive, mummy’s ‘horny-ness’ or her lies.

Unquestionably, it will be a salutary lesson for their kids on how not to behave in their own future relationships.

In the meantime, it feels a bit like watching a car crash in slow motion where real people get hurt for no good reason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvW4Wty1MLs