Ah, Love Island. Over 58 days, we’ve seen one walk out, one producer-enforced removal, and countless BooHoo outfits, and as ITV closed the villa doors last night, there was plenty for them to celebrate.
Perhaps the best marker of the show’s success is news that came last week: in 2020, there will be two series of the programme each year. But as ITV prepares to do the double, so to speak, there are still lessons to learn and warnings to note.
Despite the fact I’ve worked on an entertainment desk for five years, I had never seen Love Island before this year’s series. There’s always something else to write about and watching an endless stream of beautiful people agonising over whether to go all the way on ITV2 didn’t sound like my bag.
“It may be billed as “reality TV” but when you take a step back, Love Island is more of an incredibly long gameshow with an endless amount of unpredictable rounds.”
This June and July though, I not only discovered I was wrong, but found myself in a dedicated Facebook chat group, where a handful of my friends gathered loyally at 9pm every night, to watch along together.
In a bid to understand the show – and more importantly, how the hell I had ended up glued to it – I asked a lot of questions. Namely: “What happens next?”
The answer, dutifully provided by patient pals, was the same every time: “Nobody knows.”
The lack of format to each Love Island season is perhaps the key to its success. But it could also be its downfall.
There are plenty of rules – no smoking on the villa grounds, no contact with the outside world and, allegedly, no masturbating – but when it comes to format, Love Island is far more lax.
There is always a core group of original Islanders (who – Ovie and Maura aside – we will always love more than the latecomers) and the Casa Amor twist is de rigueur, but dumpings happen whenever producers fancy and come in a wide variety of formats. Sometimes Caroline Flack is present, sometimes the names of the people leaving are revealed by text.
On some occasions, the public gets the final say on who leaves while other episodes see the Islanders forced to choose which of their fellow contestants – anything between one and four of them – is sent packing.
A lack of drama can be addressed by flinging open the doors to Casa Amor, and a trio of contestants stuck in a love triangle can be forced to make decisions with a recoupling. Every time I started to get bored, producers would throw a jaw-droppingly perfect bombshell into the mix, or schedule an unmissable showdown.
This lack of a format goes a long way to ensuring the series stays interesting and is what makes it completely unique. It may be billed as “reality TV” but when you take a step back, Love Island is more of an incredibly long gameshow with an endless amount of unpredictable rounds. If you’re somehow in doubt of this, don’t forget the £50,000 prize and the finale’s big twist, lifted straight from noughties classic Goldenballs.
Creating a gameshow environment where anything can happen makes for addictive viewing, but for the participants whose love lives are providing two months worth of TV, it’s less than ideal.
In the old days of Big Brother, housemates would know that the weekly eviction was coming and if you’re on a show like The Chase, you’re presumably well aware of what the final round entails. But in the sunny Majorca villa, Islanders have no idea if Casa Amor is being prepped, if a night in the hideaway could swing their way, or if their partner could be evicted by the people they thought were their friends.
The time on the only clock in the villa (the one on the oven) is changed daily to keep Islanders disorientated, and they have no idea how late they’re filming either – with reports claiming some of the most emotional recouplings end up being shot at around 3am. It must all be… stressful. And having zero idea of what’s around the corner must only add to an islander’s woes and worries.
This set-up makes for great TV, but viewers are starting to pay attention to the way islanders are feeling. This year, it was distressing to see Amy Hart in floods of tears for days, before quitting and later revealing she did so to protect her own mental health.
Lucie Donlan also struggled to cope with the pressure around her partner Joe Garratt’s departure, never really settling back in after her fellow Islanders voted him off to save her. Both incidents resulted in hundreds of complaints to Ofcom.
As it moves to two series a year, the pressure will be on for ITV to keep things fresh and exciting. Its producers are clearly capable of this, so the real test will be doing so while truly safeguarding the participants. The (almost) anything goes format might bring in millions of viewers – but with the eyes of the nation bearing down on the villa, their laptops open on the Ofcom complaints page, it could also be the show’s downfall.