Last night, I heard something I hadn’t in a while. “So, I was watching Love Island…”
“Sorry, what?” I asked my friend, concerned she was spending her January nights alone watching reruns of reality TV.
“Not the old seasons,” she assured me. “The new one.”
It was the first I’d heard of the new Love Island, an all-stars version featuring memorable castmates from seasons gone by who, still single, have been sent to South Africa to copulate and cause drama for the sake of our small screens. Having been a die-hard Love Island fan in the past, the fact I didn’t even know about this series spoke volumes.
With a major marketing campaign and a lineup of recognizable – and now fairly famous – faces, the new format had everything going for it. And yet, literally no one seems to be watching it. Despite launching at ITV’s coveted 9 pm slot on a Monday evening, the episode peaked at just 1.5 million viewers – a far cry from the 3.3 million that tuned in for the series five premier back in 2019.
Today, Love Island seems to have fallen out of fashion. Who really wants to watch a bunch of lithe-limbed, tangerine-tanned wannabe influencers play kiss chase around a neon villa, anyway? Isn’t that all the show has become now? A farm factory for plucked and puckered twenty-somethings in pursuit of a six-figure fast fashion deal?
The modern iteration of Love Island is nothing like it was. Back in the heyday – think the days of Chris and Ken – it dominated public discourse. There were daily think pieces. Podcast spin-offs. Viral clips. Music videos. Margot Robbie was hooked. Lena Dunham wrote about her obsession with it. I was actually kicked out of a Love Island WhatsApp group for not contributing enough.
The trouble is: no one cares about it anymore. Why? Well, ask yourself: what have you been watching recently? Claudia Winkelman wearing tartan. A gloomy castle in the Scottish Highlands. Strangers huddled together in cloaks. Yep, like nearly 4 million other Britons, you’ve been watching BBC’s The Traitors.