Wife Swap

Each week from across the country, two families with very different values are chosen to take part in a two-week long challenge. The wives from these two families exchange husbands, children and lives (but not bedrooms) to discover just what it’s like to live another woman’s life. It’s a mind-blowing experiment that often ends up changing their lives forever.

In the first week of the swap, the wives move in with their new family and adopt their very different lifestyle. They agree to follow a manual written by the departing wife that sets out the rules of their new household — how they parent, shop, do the house work, manage their budgets and their social life. But then, in the second week, everything changes. The new wives take charge. They introduce their own set of rules and get to run the new household their way. It’s a radical shock to both families. The results are explosive, enlightening and often very funny. This is a show about the things that really matter to families across America.

At the end of the show, the two couples meet for the first time. In a highly-charged exchange of views, both couples make a frank assessment of each other and talk about what they’ve learned from the experience.

This season expect tears, tantrums and raised voices as the wives clash with their new families. The episodes include a variety of spousal swaps: a wife who caters to her beauty pageant teenage daughter’s every whim — and even does her homework — swaps lives with a super feminist wife whose children can change a flat tire; a drill sergeant wife who disciplines her children by making them do push ups in the front yard swaps lives with a prankster mom whose only rule is to have fun; the wife of a competitive truck puller who pays more attention to his vehicles than to her swaps lives with a stylish, high maintenance wife who’s waited on hand and foot by her adoring husband; an artistic, open, burlesque mom swaps lives with a lumberjack mom who is very protective of her kids; a fun loving wife who performs as a clown swaps with an ultra strict wife who trains her children instead of raising them; and a laid-back magician’s wife who loathes domestic duties swaps lives with a demanding wedding-planner wife who’s an obsessive clean freak and micromanages her husband’s and children’s lives.

When Wife Swap premiered in 2003 in the United Kingdom, it was an instant television phenomenon. The program has won numerous awards, most recently the prestigious BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television Arts) Award for Best Reality Show and the Golden Rose for

Best Reality Program at the International Rose D’Or Festival, Europe’s top entertainment television awards. Wife Swap currently airs from France to Australia and Germany to New Zealand. It has been sold as an acquisition or a format in more than twenty international territories.

Wife Swap is an RDF Media production. It was created by Stephen Lambert (Faking It and Junkyard Wars) and is executive-produced by Stef Wagstaffe and Michael Davies (Who Wants to be a Millionaire). Mike Gamson, Jonathon Grosskopf and Stephen Pettinger are the co-executive producers.

other Information:

• Network: ABC
• Premiere: Friday, October 3, 8-10pm
• Website: http://abc.go.com/primetime/wifeswap