It's important to remember that these are TV shows. The objective is to entertain, sometimes at the expense of those who agree to appear on the show.
In real life, I've met a few people who came from cultures where arranged marriage is common, or used to be common. I've spoken to some of them about it too.
1. Man from Saudi Arabia. Prospective brides were brought to his parent's home. He was allowed an hour or two alone with the young woman to chat together. The woman's parents didn't always allow removal of the veil. In his own words, "You have to be careful, because sometimes they have nice eyes but are not otherwise very pretty".
2. Man from Pakistan. He told me that his grandfather had been arranged for someone's daughter at the age of around 3 or 4. His father was also arranged for someone at around the age of 10-12. At the time he told me this he was mid twenties, and I couldn't help wondering if he was panicking that nothing had been arranged for him yet.
The other men I spoke to all came from relatively liberal families, and their parents did not attempt to arrange a marriage. At a rough guess, I'd say the correlation is that more educated parents tend to be more liberal, and less inclined to try and arrange a marriage for their children. Here in the UK, arranged marriages sometimes also involve
forced marriage, and concepts such as 'family honour' that many Western people would struggle to relate to.
If the parents approach the task with sincerity, and a genuine desire for their child to be happy, then I see no reason why an arranged marriage shouldn't succeed. However, in those cultures where arranged marriage is common, unfortunately I think decisions sometimes get more influenced by financial and heritage considerations rather than compatibility. This can result in doomed, miserable marriages that are only really held together by the shame and stigma of separation and divorce.
Could an arranged marriage work for Westerners? I think it could, but only if both parties were fully signed up to the kind of selfless model of marriage described in the Bible.
For those who are interested in what can go wrong, I'd recommend reading the book 'Shame' written by Jasvinder Sanghera.
The film 'East is East' is also a hilarious and somewhat satirical depiction of arranged marriages in 1970s UK.