Why new Bachelor Matt Agnew is a good pick

After several seasons of recycling and a disastrous end to last year’s show, The Bachelor has made a big call with their latest pick.

The Bachelor has announced its new star for 2019 in astrophysicist Matt Agnew, which has Australia scratching its collective head and saying, “Who?”

(Followed closely by “phwoar” and references to hot nerds.)

Agnew is a departure for The Bachelor, which has served us Bachelorette leftovers and a retired sports star looking for a media career in recent years. The last unknown on The Bachelor was Sam Wood in 2015.

I’ll challenge anyone to a Tim Tam slamathon if they don’t agree Sam was the best bachelor we’ve had, largely because he was so genuine and unconcerned about the camera getting his best side. We got to watch Sam and Snezana genuinely fall in love on the show and then launch a fitness business off the back of their success. It’s the stuff of textbook romance.

Then we endured runners-up Richie Strahan and Matty Johnson — look, they both seem like nice guys, but I think we can all agree those two years were an absolute snoozefest. The problem producers faced with those two was audiences fell in love with them after seeing about seven minutes of heavily-edited footage of them being charming but failing to win the heart of their respective bachelorettes Sam Frost and Georgia Love.

We’ve all learnt the hard way that seven minutes of charming does not a series carry. Richie stuttered and fumbled his way through his series, barely able to string two sentences together when it came to talking about his feelings. He eventually embarked on a short-lived romance with Alex Nation after falling in love in a bathtub full of chocolate. He disappeared into obscurity but promises to pop up on our screens soon for Bachelor in Paradise.

And while Matty J found true love with delightfully genuine jewellery designer Laura, there was no grit in that series’ shell at all. Any personality Matty J showed us in Georgia Love’s series of The Bachelorette went out the window as he played it safe and conservative, seemingly so he didn’t offend any potential Instagram sponsors.

Who could ever forget the moment Richie and Alex shared in the chocolate bath. Picture: Channel 10

What we craved, the producers seemingly thought at that stage, was someone who knew how to shine on TV — someone with media nous. It worked for The Bachelorette when they cast TV journalist Georgia Love and then, of course, the spectacular Sophie Monk. But the problem with casting rugby star Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins as our bachelor last year was he seemed more concerned with wheeling out his one-liner dad jokes than he was with getting to know the women who turned up to win his heart.

Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins never seemed completely comfortable in his Bachelor role. Picture: Jonathan Ng

What was Nick in it for? A commentating career? Because he wasn’t in it for love from the get-go, or he makes for a seriously distant and disconnected boyfriend. Either way, he was clearly uncomfortable and the whole thing was excruciating to watch.

To the producers’ credit, they’ve taken a look at the past few series and decided to try something different before we all switch off entirely. Matt Agnew already has a great career, and I can’t imagine there’s a way of becoming Australia’s favourite TV astrophysicist. (Although I never thought a TV vet could be a thing either, and Chris Brown has well and truly shown me up there.)

Matt Agnew, astrophysicist and now The Bachelor 2019. Picture: Channel 10

The man has no public social media to speak of, except for a brand spanking new Instagram account clearly run by the Channel 10 publicity department.

Try as I might, I can’t think of any reason Matt Agnew has signed on to be the bachelor, other than he genuinely thinks it might be a fun way to meet a woman.

He even told New Idea: “It may be an unorthodox way to meet someone, but I think it’ll be a sensational experience and make for a cracking ‘how we met’ story!”

Strangely, I believe him. He does not seem like a guy out to increase his fan base or launch a protein bar business.

This approach harks back to a simpler time when the first series of The Bachelor introduced us to a humble shirtless chiropractor by the name of Tim, who went on to win the heart of fair Anna. We didn’t yet know that looking for love on TV could be a springboard to social media fame (but we did find out super quick thanks to Tim and Anna and their carefully curated Instagram accounts).

While reality TV is going to hell in an UberEats bag, The Bachelor is bucking the trend and strangely making a series that looks like it could be going back to basics — genuinely finding love.

We know nothing about Matt Agnew, and maybe that’s exactly what we need.