Tawdry Thursday Tussle for TV2 and TV3?

Thursdays are shaping up to be the trashiest night on TV.

Going head-to-head at 8.30 from July 28 will be TV2’s Australian version of Seven Year Switch and TV3’s Killer Women With Piers Morgan.

Switch follows four couples who take part in a social experiment to save their relationships that includes living with a new partner for two weeks.

Variety says the format “essentially weds the Wife Swap/Trading Spouses reality sub-niche with trappings of The Bachelor” while the Sydney Morning Herald observed: “It was supposed to help couples stick together but Seven Year Switch shows that sometimes it’s the people who need saving, not the relationship.”

The series proved a big hit in Australia, where it even spawned a reunion special and prompted one of its fiercest critics to acknowledge: “Seven Year Switch started out the tackiest show on TV. Then finished as the best.”

TV3’s Killer Women With Piers Morgan profiles some of America’s most notorious female murderers.

Radio Times dubbed it “lurid, cheap and obsessed with ‘evil'” while The Guardian reckons “there’s something a bit murder-porn about it all.

“There are no great revelations, or insights into violence and gender.”

A Telegraph columnist accused Morgan of “exploiting” sexism and The Times argued his “psychological insights were largely limited to his experience”.

Echoed The Daily Mail: “Morgan is a persistent but lenient interviewer, far more used to nudging answers from reluctant celebs, than confronting hardened psychopaths.”

But judging from the Twittersphere, viewers were “pretty hooked“. Only two episodes were made but ITV has ordered more.