MTV's 'Are You the One?' looks for love in New Orleans in Season 6

By now, viewers of the unscripted MTV series "Are You the One?" 

are well acquainted with the show's multi-faceted gist. A sort of mashup of "The Bachelor" and "The Real World" with a little Big Brother thrown in, it's part dating show, part game show, part social experiment. But for its upcoming season, which debuts 9 p.m. CT on Wednesday (Sept. 29), the show's producers have added an intriguing twist - in the form of the show's setting.

"We're in our sixth season of the show, and we have shot in beautiful places, including Hawaii, we shot in Puerto Rico, we shot in the Dominican Republic," executive producer Rob LaPlante said. "This was our first season shooting in the continental U.S., and we wanted to find a place that has its own unique flavor."

They found it in New Orleans, where the production set up camp to shoot the 10-episode season

"I actually shot another MTV show in New Orleans, 'Real World: New Orleans,'" LaPlante said. "That was in 2000 -- 16 years ago -- and it was a delightful experience. The city and the culture added so much flavor to the show, and we certainly wanted to bring that to this show. It's 16 years later and New Orleans is as bright and colorful and fantastic as it ever was."

While that means viewers will get all the obligatory postcard images you'd expect to find in a New Orleans-set show, as well as segments featuring contestants taking dates on swamp tours, through the French Quarter and the like, LaPlante said Season 6 reaches beyond the oft-photographed geographic heart of the city.

That's owed to the show's premise, which sees 22 young, single people living in the same sprawling house. All have been picked by relationship experts and all have a secretly selected "perfect match" who is also part of the group. Over the course of the season, which is hosted by Terrence J of BET's "106 & Park," the contestants get opportunities to know each other and compete in challenges together. Then, at the end of each episode, they have to try to guess who the pre-determined perfect matches are.

If by season's end the cast has correctly guessed all 11 matches, they split a cool $1 million prize.

And if they get it wrong? Bupkis.

In order to make it all work, though, producers need a big, film-friendly house that -- given how much of the show is set there -- looks great on-camera. At the same time, they need a place somewhat protected from prying eyes.

For Season 6, that meant a trip across Lake Pontchartrain to the St. Tammany Parish to the Madisonville Covington area, where a suitably large, privately owned mansion -- located on a picturesque plot of riverfront property -- afforded them all the privacy they needed to conduct their social experiment.
 
"So you're going to see everything you usually see when you see a TV show set in New Orleans," LaPlante said. "But we extended the radius out."

Of course, the central focus of "Are You the One?" is the relationships that may -- or may not -- result from the whole crazy experiment. (Of the couples competing in the previous five season, five are reportedly still together. One of those is married.) The setting, however, goes a long way, both romantically and visually, LaPlante said.