Another dating show? These days, it feels like we’re drowning in them.
Hot on the heels of Love Is Blind UK (and the car crash that was), we’re now getting the BBC’s very own attempt to navigate the crowded reality TV dating market: Stranded on Honeymoon Island.
The premise, as you might expect, does exactly what it says on the tin. Five lucky (or are they unlucky?) couples are matched up after an extremely unglamorous evening of speed-dating. The chats look short and rather shallow – “he has a creative startup brand, I have a creative startup brand!”, one woman chirps about her love interest.
Never mind. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and those same couples are being married on a pier in the Philippines. Not officially, as the show hastens to tell us, but they are “making a meaningful commitment to each other.”
Well, they’re still wearing the wedding dresses and rings, and soon enough they’re boarding a catamaran to their own remote private island, where they’ll be spending the next three weeks – as virtual strangers – in a little wooden shack with nothing but bugs for company, all to see whether they’re romantically compatible.
Did I mention? Said shack has no walls, and what looks like no insect repellent either, so those bugs are going to be everywhere. Yes, this looks like exactly the type of nurturing environment in which tender young love will flourish.
As you’d expect at this point, Stranded is slickly edited, stuffed with pop songs and complete with that kind of Netflix gloss that covers most reality TV shows at this point (glam, oversaturated, lots of close-ups). As the show continues, the couples are allowed to interact with each other and complete tasks in the name of bonding, but really, it’s all about causing drama.
And that’s all well and good, but what is it really offering that’s new? These days, it feels like we’re being force-fed dating shows like geese, way past saturation point and into the realms of pure exhaustion. Marrying a complete stranger? Why, that sounds rather like Love is Blind. Putting your phones away for three weeks to date in splendid isolation? Hmm, maybe Love Island. Things breaking down spectacularly? May I direct you to every dating show that’s ever existed.
That the show works at all is down to the personalities involved. Hats off to the casting team, because they’re all compulsively watchable, even if the word “unhinged” is thrown around rather a little too much.
There’s Hannah, the die-hard raver whose connection with Sam looks like it might actually work, on the outside at least. There’s Helen, the proud Essex lesbian who falls hard for Abby – as well as Mae, who says she’s been through some “rough times when it comes to love.”
“Not because I’m too much,” she hastens to add. “But because they’re not enough.” Help. Davina McCall does her best, but Stranded doesn’t offer anything new, beyond a tired feeling that maybe dating shows aren’t the right way to find The One. Maybe it’s time to finally redownload Hinge instead.
Stranded on Honeymoon Island is streaming now on BBC One
