As Jane Austen might have written, if Jane Austen were alive, American, and working for Fox, " It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man pretending to be in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. " So on the new reality series Joe Millionaire, 20 young, single women throw themselves at a tall, dark, and hirsute bachelor who, they’re told, has just inherited $50 million. But in a plot point that echoes Austen’s droll examples of the perils of falling in love with superficialities, the millionaire is not what he appears to be. Evan Marriott (no relation to the hotel chain) is an earnest hunk who works in construction. Annual income: $19,000.

For Joe Millionaire, Evan was cleaned up, transplanted to a château in France’s Loire Valley, given a crash course in etiquette, taught how to waltz and ride a horse (you know, rich-people stuff), and schooled in the ways of wine by an amusingly supercilious Australian manservant named Paul. " Fish? " asked Paul. " White, " replied Evan, confidently. " Salmon? " " Uh . . . red? "

Over the past three episodes of the seven-episode series (which airs Mondays at 9 p.m.), Evan has whittled down the field to five women, one of whom could emerge with a marriage proposal. Before the show ends, Fox promises, Evan will reveal his near-penniless status. Then, I presume, we’ll see whether the women were in it only for the money.

Unlike Fox’s notorious freak show Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, which backfired when it was found that the groom had at least one restraining order against him, Joe Millionaire is up front about being a prank. Joe Millionaire is almost a self-parody of Fox programming. And yes, it’s ripe for snarky jokes. What’s to keep Fox from unleashing Joe Cokehead, Joe Polygamist, and Joe Wanted in Seven States for a String of Convenience-Store Robberies on some future unsuspecting golddiggers?

Sure, it’s easy to laugh at Joe Millionaire. But that’s the point. It’s the first intentionally funny reality series, a succinct and ruthlessly clear-eyed satire on post-feminist ideas about dating, marriage roles, and class consciousness. It earns its place beside such seminal works of Austen worship as Sex and the City and Bridget Jones’ Diary, finding timeless folly in the mate-hunting behavior of the not so rich and famous.

The women on Joe Millionaire are educated, have careers, and exhibit no trouble speaking their minds when it’s just them and the camera. Yet watching them simper in Evan’s fisherman-knit-sweatered presence, you’d think they were 18th-century maidens for whom marriage is the only hope of leaving their father’s homes and gaining a place in society. And rest assured, the Cinderella dream is also alive and well here. In the premiere episode, the women arrived at the château in open horse-drawn carriages, and there were many exclamations of " I feel like a princess! " and " It’s just like a fairy tale! " This was an ethnically and racially diverse group of women, yet every one of them went swoony at the sight of that château. You could almost see tiara-filled thought bubbles over their heads.

For his part, Evan is surprisingly introspective about the show’s deception. In his narration, he admits to feeling bad about leading the girls on: " The more I think about it, the more it eats my brain up. " An endearing clod who bears more than a passing resemblance to Elaine’s boyfriend Puddy on Seinfeld, Evan hopes to choose the right girl, the one who will still give him a chance when she learns the truth. He agreed to become Joe Millionaire, he told us in the premiere, because he’s shy and has a hard time dating — apparently, all the really cool women won’t look twice at a guy with no money and no college education. Sadly for Evan, this sentiment was echoed by many of the contestants on Joe Millionaire in their conversations with the show’s off-camera interviewer. What’s money got to do with marriage? Everything.

In the second episode, for instance, Evan was sent on unpleasant group dates designed to expose the women’s true characters and weed out the potential whiners and divas. One group went grape picking in the mud and the rain. Another took a locomotive ride, after shoveling coal into the train’s furnace. The third group had to clean out a stable before being sent horseback riding. " This is about as romantic as an iodine enema, " Evan declared on the horseback-riding date, sounding alarmingly as if he were speaking from experience.

The women interpreted the Herculean labors of these dates as being a test of their princess-worthiness: to deserve Evan’s (alleged) fortune, they had to show how little they cared for the comforts of wealth. Evan, of course, saw the experience somewhat differently. As he explained in a voiceover, " I’m probably not gonna be able to support a woman fully. I’ve had to work hard for everything I have. I want to see if they can roll with it and do a little hard labor. "

Like the first episode’s harrowing ballgown-procuring scene (think Filene’s basement during the annual wedding-dress sale), these group dates were hilarious and fascinating studies in female competitiveness. On the horseback-riding date, the brazen and somewhat weathered blonde Heidi (who had already made enemies by letting it slip that she had a boyfriend, and by hogging the ballgowns) made a bold play for Evan’s attention: she pretended to be afraid of her horse. On the train date, Melissa Jo — who insists on being called " Mojo " — monopolized Evan by yakking about herself while the other women silently glared.

Did these gambits work? At the end of the second episode, when Evan chose his final five, Heidi was among those shown the door. Graceful to the end, she met her fate with petulance and disdain, berating the butler in fractured French for not being able to find her suitcase. We saw her tirade translated in subtitles: " I no have happy. You no have bread baggage. "

Mojo, however, remains in the running, despite (or because of) her fondness for distracting hats and glitter eyeshadow. Her competition: the standoffish Zora (despite Evan’s complaints about a lack of chemistry on their one-on-one date last week), the bitchy-sweet Melissa ( " She had this Princess Leia thing going on with her hair, it was kinda cute " ), and the elegant Sarah ( " a little more uptight than the other girls I usually date, but she’s hot " ). Last week, Evan eliminated Alison ( " sophisticated, feisty, red hair, red hot " ) after an awkward date where she seemed put off by his lack of refinement (he refused to eat his pâté) and answered him honestly in the negative when he asked her whether she thought they were connecting. Afterward, she looked into the camera and bittersweetly admitted to being prone to skittishness at the beginning of relationships. In an unexpectedly affecting moment, she and Evan both got choked up after he gave her her walking papers.

Did Alison’s quick tongue and Evan’s imperfect judgment spoil something that might have worked? Will happy fate conspire (as it always does in Jane Austen) to ensure not only that Evan wins the woman of his dreams but that a respectable living falls into his lap (sweater model? Home Depot spokesman?), thus enabling them to marry? We can only hope. Because, as Jane would surely caution, love ain’t happenin’ on this dude’s paycheck.

MEANWHILE, on ABC’s The Bachelorette (which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m.), Trista Rehn is living in some alternative dating reality where she has her pick of 25 single, presumably heterosexual, reasonably good-looking, and not overtly psychotic men. Now that’s a fairy tale.

The Bachelorette couldn’t exist without the liberating, women-on-top example of Sex and the City. Rehn makes out with guy after guy, sets the rules, takes the reins, and is never skewed as a slut. More power to ya, Sista Trista! But those guys . . . I mean, how desperate does a man have to be, how completely without pride, to strut into such a fray, to have to work it and sell it to get noticed, to be reduced to gossiping about the other himbos who are throwing themselves at Trista and monopolizing her attention? The Bachelorette’s girly-man beaux have their surfaces shined, their claws out, their vulnerable hopes exposed for the world to see. Will I get a rose from Trista tonight? Will she pick me? Oh, it makes you long for the dashing aloofness of Mr. Darcy, the firm-jawed reserve of Colonel Brandon — and the manly self-effacement of Joe Millionaire.