THE HAGUE -- There is no sex, no scandal, no sniping and no foul language, but a new Dutch reality show is getting ratings TV bosses dream of, with a quarter of the country glued to their television sets.

The "stars" are Dutch farmers trying to find wives to share love and the quiet, if rough, rural life.

"The program shows normal, simple people who are isolated because of their job as farmers," Jose Kager, spokeswoman for the KRO public broadcaster told Agence France-Presse.

"People love to see authentic stories ... and of course, love touches all of us," she added.

The Sunday night show, which started here in 2005, broke records this week when more than four million people -- in a country of 16 million inhabitants -- watched "Boer zoekt vrouw" or "Farmer Seeks Wife".

"It's almost the same as for football finals with the Dutch team," said a bemused Kager.

The formula is straight out of a reality television handbook with confessions to the camera, suspense when candidates are eliminated.

But historian Hans van der Horst, who wrote a book called "Understanding the Dutch", feels its success also stems from the fact that "the countryside is considered a bucolic paradise" for the Dutch.

Given the success of other countries' versions of the farmer-seeks-wife show, it is not only the Dutch pining for the simple life.

The Norwegian version has been a favorite since it first aired in 2004, and in Sweden, where it began in 2006, it has led to at least one marriage and attracted some 1.8 million viewers out of a population of nine million -- 20 percent of the population.

"In our ultra-urbanized society the ultimate dream is to live in the countryside," said Van der Horst.

A farmer, then, looks like a good match for a city dweller dreaming of an idyllic life away from it all, he said.

"But sometimes the farmer turns out to be uncouth, a real country bumpkin and things go bad, which can also be very funny ... and the Dutch like to laugh at people," he added.

Even the Dutch Minister of Agriculture Gerda Verburg occasionally contributes comments on the program's website.

"The minister likes the show because it focuses on farmers and shows that it is a beautiful profession but also a hard job," her spokeswoman Cindy Heijdra told AFP.

Following successive European agriculture reforms and the industrialization of the sector, many Dutch farmers have left for countries like Canada. Others retire, without children stepping in to follow in their footsteps.

According to the Dutch central statistics bureau CBS, the number of farmers in the Netherlands dropped from 120,000 in 1992 to 76,000 in 2007.

"This converts to the loss of some 55 agricultural businesses a week," CBS said.

Despite this decline, the Netherlands -- after the United States -- is still the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products, exporting flowers, plants, meat and dairy products, according to the Dutch agriculture ministry.

Today, however, most of the country's population has been living in urbanized areas for at least two centuries with no realistic idea about life in the country, Van der Horst said.

But "agriculture remains important in the Netherlands even if farmers make up less than one percent of the population," he said.

After two seasons, several couples have emerged from the reality show. One of them recently announced the birth of their first daughter on the program's website.