In its weekly rulings on TV shows that have breached content rules, the media regulator noted that a female contestant is heard swearing in one episode of the show.
In each episode, two single women move to the country and vie for the attentions of a single farmer. The series is broadcast on Wednesday evenings, after 9pm, but it is repeated in a pre-watershed slot on Sunday mornings.
During the offending episode, one of the female contestants, Karla, explained on camera her feelings about the single farmer Derek's developing friendship with her rival Sarah. She said: "It is nice to see that she [Sarah] gets along with Derek, but it is a bit frightening, ‘cos you're like, fuck!"
Five was made to apologise after Ofcom received three complaints from viewers who objected to the strong language being broadcast at a time of day when children may have been watching.
Five explained that, due to human error, its compliance team failed to notice the use of the offensive language and therefore did not flag it to be edited from the pre-watershed version of the programme. Five said the language also went unnoticed when the edited version was checked again.
The broadcaster said a viewer complained directly after transmission and that it arranged for the episode to be re-edited, to remove the offensive language from any future transmission. Five said it has introduced further measures to ensure similar errors do not occur again.
The Sunday after the offending programme, Five broadcast two apologies for any offence caused to viewers, one preceding and one following the next episode in this series.
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