Love Island has occupied a weird spot in the heart of British culture for a few years now, at once able to be adored by the public at large and intellectualised to death by broadsheet newspapers. But you have to admit that, if the wheels were ever going to come off, they’ll come off now.
The controversy regarding the suicides of two former contestants, and the questions asked of ITV about the level of aftercare afforded to them, did Love Island no favours. And the sudden change in personnel, with Laura Whitmore being drafted in at the last minute after previous host Caroline Flack (who denies all claims) was accused of bludgeoning her boyfriend’s head with a table lamp in his sleep, couldn’t have come at a worse time. And now there is a winter Love Island series, the first episode of which debuted last night.
This might be the biggest danger of all. The show has moved past the other issues; especially Flack, who in reality didn’t actually contribute very much. But adding a second annual series reeks of desperation. Oversaturation has already killed everything from Big Brother to X Factor, and at this rate Love Island might be next. It now needs to source twice as many contestants a year without demonstrating a drop in quality. Surely there aren’t enough identical preening berks in the UK to sustain that sort of output.
But good news! Apparently there are! The opening episode was textbook Love Island. The boys were all woy-oy sixpacks and cartoon teeth. The girls all uniformly looked as if they required the services of an osteopath from struggling under the weight of their own eyebrows. One contestant claims she was the inspiration for that song Lewis Capaldi wrote about his horrible girlfriend. Another’s chat-up line was “If my dad dies, I become a lord.” One boy observed the full, beautiful, dramatic sweep of humanity with all its gorgeous and heartbreaking nuances before declaring that his greatest wish in life was to have a girlfriend with nice eyebrows. Meanwhile, the girls quickly agreed that they really wanted to find a boy with a personality. That’s it. That’s as detailed as the discussion got.
Nor has the new winter setting altered the format. Part of me was hoping that a show called Winter Love Island would really lean into the title, and consist of nothing but introverts in big coats avoiding eye contact over cups of tea during a slating blizzard in Bognor. But no. Like always, it was just loads of slow motion footage of women in bikinis Here Come The Girlsing their way across some decking for what felt like hours at a time. God, there is so much slow motion on Love Island. If ITV would play the whole thing at normal speed, the entire series would be over by Wednesday.
Obviously it’s pointless to truly judge a reality show by its first episode, because all the really entertaining fights and handjobs and ugly personality schisms won’t occur for another week or so. But already the show is doing a good job at pointing us towards potential baddies. Key among them are Connor – a man who genuinely bought his teeth on Google – who has already shown himself to be needy and vindictive in equal measure; and Ollie, who is posh.
And then there are The Twins, Eve and Jessica, who sent the status quo haywire in the dying moments of last night’s episode by tottering in like a pair of Paris Hilton androids sent loopy by a rogue Lambrini spill. By being twins with boobs, they currently represent the biggest threat to every single rock solid 45-minute-old relationship inside the villa.
So far, we can rack up this series as a bullet dodged. For better or worse, Winter Love Island is exactly the same as Summer Love Island. If you didn’t like the original, there is nothing to suggest that you’ll suddenly come around to it now. But if you’re a fan, knock yourselves out. Now you get to spend two seasons a year feeling bad about your physical appearance instead of just one. Saints be praised.
