What's on Russian TV: Let's Get Married, Divorced, and LGBT

This week, Channel One’s “Let’s Get Married” show moved into a prime-time television slot, allowing a far wider audience to mull as they eat their dinner over whether Sasha is right for Masha.

The dating show started last summer, during the “Year of the Family” drive to boost the birthrate. As its title suggests, it’s not a blind-date type show for teenagers. The participants are usually that much older, often divorced or widowed and have to endure a grilling from the hosts about their relationship history.

Despite this, the show is pretty entertaining. The best thing about it is the main host, actress Larisa Guzeyeva, who likes to bring the lonely hearts down to earth with a brutally frank appraisal of their chances.

A divorce battle between Russian billionaire fertilizer mogul Dmitri Rybolovlev and his wife has washed up on the island.

The wife, Elena Rybolovlev, is flinging allegations of infidelity. She's also fighting to seize 50 percent of the couple's marital assets, which she estimates to be worth between $6 billion and $12 billion.

Among the assets: the $95 million Palm Beach mansion Dmitri Rybolovlev purchased from real estate mogul Donald Trump in 2008.

A chief editor at a local television channel called homosexuality an “abomination” in a caustic reply to an open letter written by an insulted viewer. The viewer, St. Petersburg resident Maria Yefremenkova, had earlier held a one-woman protest against what she described as a “homophobic” broadcast that “discriminated” against sexual minorities.

Valery Tatarov, the editor of 100TV’s public affairs talk show “Bridge of Freedom,” refused to apologize for the broadcast, as requested by Yefremenkova. Instead, he informed her, in an e-mail dated July 1, that he would not apologize unless a court ordered him to do so.

In closing, Tatarov expressed “the deepest disrespect for homosexuality and other abominations” and wished Yefremenkova “the best of luck in studying the law as well as civil rights and liberties.”

The program that sparked Yefremenkova’s campaign was broadcast on 100TV on May 22. The topic debated by the show’s in-studio guests was “Is homosexualism [sic] a crime against childhood?”