The Bachelor S26E7

Warner Bros. Entertainment / NZK Productions

In 2022, The Bachelor aired its 26th season, which is still one of the most viewed prime time TV Shows in the US. It was a great honor for us that Progressive Productions got chosen as the Austrian production partner for an entire episode of a show with such scale and history. For this season, the show visited four countries outside of the US, among which Austria was the third.

Due to some of our previous projects, we already had experience in collaborating with large studios. Among others, we have worked together with NBCUniversal and 20th Century Fox on large scale productions like Royal Pains, Covert Affairs and The Sound of City project with Julie Andrews. As the genre of The Bachelor was relatively new to us, we were glad to accept this challenge to quickly and successfully adapt ourselves to the system of the world’s most successful reality show. Thanks to this, we have gained important knowledge, enabling us to add reality productions to our list of expertise with confidence. It is part of our policy to stay fully discrete regarding behind the scenes processes of our productions, so in this article, we will only elaborate on information connected to shooting The Bachelor's Viennese episode, based on what is visible to any viewer watching the show.

Due to the style of the show, The Bachelor was a perfect match with Austria’s capital city. Even without cinematic tricks and heavily scripted scenes, Vienna has such a romantic atmosphere that can be effortlessly shared with TV viewers. However, it was vital to find the perfect location for each scene of the show, a process we could complete thanks to our vast local knowledge. Which knowledge also helped us to bring in such amazing people to appear in the show as Eva Poleschinski, fashion designer and Mag. Katrin Wippersberg, psychoanalyst.

The city of Vienna has many aspects that perfectly fit The Bachelor’s creative concept, among which its palaces were the most natural mutual point of the show and the city. There was no shortage in the choice of palaces, as Vienna has more than 100 in total, the most significant of which got featured in the episode.

In Austria, palaces can be placed in two categories. One part of these can be found in the inner districts of the cities and are called “palais” in German. An example of this kind of palaces hidden among tenement houses is Palais Ferstel for example, which appears in the episode. The other category of palaces is more often (but not always) found in the outskirts as they are a lot larger in scale and are called “schloss”. For example, the Belvedere and Schönbrunn are both schlosses that also got featured as locations of The Bachelor’s Viennese adventures.

The apex scene of the Viennese shoot was the rose ceremony held in the grandiose ballroom of the Palais Ferstel

Vienna’s most famous palace is probably Schloss Schönbrunn, which has an awe-inspiring facade and interiors

It is not accidental that Schloss Belvedere is the home to many of Austria’s most beautiful artworks

The special characteristic of the reality genre - as everyone knows - is that the camera never stops rolling. Therefore, such everyday activities also get placed in the spotlight like taking transport between locations. While with other types of productions, providing talents transport to the shoot is only a question of logistics, in the case of The Bachelor, such a maneuver has creative and aesthetic expectations to meet as well. This led to such special picture vehicles getting used as an antique horse carriage and an original 1963 Rolls Royce, among others.

As previously mentioned, Vienna has countless romantic sides to it. Many other iconic locations with characteristic Austrian features also got highlighted in the episode. Ranging from a cute corner café to a classy downtown boutique or an elegant library, Vienna hasn’t failed to provide The Bachelor with stunning places to have a date.