Love Island UK
A love letter to the stupidest show I can't wait to watch every year
Everything I know about pop culture I learn from gay men with podcasts. For years, I heard these disseminators of culture dish about the TV show Love Island UK. I wasn’t sure where, or even how, to watch it. I never had time to figure it out.
In March 2020, when the government said we’d be at home for two weeks, I decided I had time. Season 6 was streaming on Hulu, so I dove in.
My experience with British TV was The Great British Bake Off and Midsomer Murders. I was unprepared for the variety of accents, as well as a whole new lexicon of British slang. Craic on? The ick? Grafting boots? I had no idea what any of this meant.
Another thing I didn’t know? That in the UK, Love Island airs daily. It’s an eight-week show. Could I seriously watch 40 one-hour episodes in two weeks? I was gonna find out.
For the uninitiated, Love Island is a reality show where (straight, or at least straight presenting) contestants converge on an island to cohabitate and “couple up” with one another until someone “finds true love” and wins the “game.” The show mixes it up by bringing in new contestants called bombshells. Thus my favorite seasonal saying, “A hot new bombshell has entered the villa.”
Day-to-day, it’s 12 contestants, give or take a few bombshells, strutting around the villa’s pools compulsively sipping out of personalized water bottles and pulling each other for a “chat.” Chats are the engine that drives Love Island.
It’s butts-out dating. Literally. All the women wear thong bikinis and walk around all day, cheeks flapping in the wind. It’s very butt-forward. It’s also tongue forward. You need a high threshold for loud, open mouth kissing.
When I started watching Love Island in 2020, I was two years into recovery for disordered eating. No one on my care team would have advised me to watch a 40-episode reality show of thin women in string bikinis, but I did and it was fine. It has never bothered me. I assume it’s because the contestants are thin without it being a plot point. I don’t recall ever hearing someone on the show talk about “feeling fat” or needing to “burn off dessert.”
Do you know how rare it is to watch ANYTHING that doesn’t have some flavor of fatphobia and/or anti-fat bias? It is literally insane that the dating show where all the women have their butts out the whole time is a safe space for me.
I am a feminist and a fat liberationist. There are things wrong with this show, and your mileage may vary. But this is my love letter and this show doesn’t trigger me.
Ok, don’t cancel me, but also? The men are kinda sweet. I mean, they’re young and dumb and entitled, but they’re not doing the toxic masculinity thing that so many men do over here. They tussle when they both want the same woman, but it never goes too far and they always make up and hug. These men openly say they love each other and kiss and hug on television. A lot of them cry! The bar is in hell, but I have a soft spot for these idiot men who say “broski” 300 times an episode and cry when one of their friends gets dumped from the island.
The show insists on making the job titles of the contestants a thing. It’s so funny because they’re usually 22. Their job is going to change a million times after this show. Every season there’s at least one scaffolder and all the girls want him. You may be wondering, what is a scaffolder? And I’m here to tell you, I don’t know.
And then there are the tattoos. You will see the most rotten tattoos you’ve ever seen. A few seasons ago, a guy had the faces of Churchill, Muhammad Ali, Einstein and Amy Winehouse all on one arm.
The show works like this: in the first episode six women in bikinis stand across from six men in swimming trunks and they pick each other based on looks. It’s fiiiiiine. They actually changed it up this year and had the women choose the men based on the words from the guys’ dating profiles. So the women picked the men without having seen them.
Everyone gets put into a “couple” in the first episode. Again, the goal of the game is to not become single and get dumped from the island. So you kinda want to find someone fast and stick with them throughout the season.
Once you’re in a couple, you “sleep together.” Everyone sleeps in one giant room. Each couple shares a bed, which is wild. You meet a guy, show him your butt cheeks all day and then crawl into bed with him alongside a room full of people you met eight hours ago.
The show is hosted by Maya Jama, and narrated by comedian Iain Stirling. When Maya shows up, something is about to go down. She will typically saunter in and ask the contestants to gather around the fire pit where she will surprise them with a “recoupling.” This is like emotional dodgeball. They alternate, but let’s say the men have to stand up beside Maya. The women stay seated and take turns giving speeches about who they want to stay coupled up with or why they want to switch to someone else. It is chaotic and dramatic and I love it.
Midway through each season, something called Casa Amor happens. Casa Amor is a second location, within shouting distance of the main villa, and they send all the men there to couple up with six new women. Lads holiday, indeed. Meanwhile, the women stay back at the main villa and six new men are brought in. It’s the ultimate test. At this point, some actual couples have formed. Will they stay loyal? Will they cheat? Will they get caught? Yes.
At the end of Casa Amor week, the men come back to the villa either alone, ready to stick with their partner, or holding the hand of a new woman, thus dumping their “girlfriend.” It’s very dramatic.
After Casa Amor, the couples start to really take off and you start to see who might make it to the end. There’s usually a little less chaos and a little more genuine emotion. Until … movie night!
Movie night is my favorite episode. They separate the men and the women into two rows and put a huge projection screen up in front of everyone. Then they play clips of what happened in Casa Amor. It is so satisfying to watch these men get caught and collectively yelled at. Endlessly entertaining. It’s the best episode of every season.
Between Casa Amor, movie night and the finale, there are a few episodes worth noting. There’s a great one called Snog, Marry, Pie that is excellent television. There’s another one where the contestants’ parents come to the villa and meet everyone. The episode I dread is the party/concert. I’m sure it’s some sponsorship deal, but they bring a DJ or pop star in to perform in front of 12 people in a pool. The contestants fake dance and there is truly criminal cinematography. A mess all around.
Then it’s the end! They drag the last week out. Everyone goes on a “final date” and the show makes two people eating appetizers a 45-minute episode. It’s tedious. But then there’s a live finale, which is fun to watch. This probably goes without saying, but the finale airs in the UK before it airs here. So you have to be careful not to accidentally find out who won while you’re scrolling social media.
******
Every year around this time, I start to yearn for Love Island, and probably, unconsciously, the version of myself that existed pre-2020. In March 2020, I didn’t know yet how many of our friends and family they’d let die. I didn’t know that it wouldn’t just be for “two weeks.” I didn’t know that five years later, when I finally deleted my Twitter account, I’d see my list of muted words and tear up seeing “ventilator” on the list. Problematic as these types of shows are, this one is unfortunately tied to a more innocent and tender me, and once a year, for eight weeks, I get to sit beside her and watch the stupidest show on television and tell her we survived.
Questions for the producers of Love Island:
Is there a bikini waxer on staff at the villa?
Does someone come in and refresh their haircuts and highlights?
Do they do their own manicures and pedicures?
How many private, off-camera bathrooms and showers are there?
Are those their bikinis that they bring from home, or do you provide them?
How do they not get eaten alive by mosquitos?
Do you only bring on contestants who don’t sunburn easily?
Are there camera operators or is it all filmed by the cameras mounted in the villa?
That’s it! I love this show. Season 12 just hit Hulu. I’m about a week in. If you have Hulu, join me! I only watch the UK version. I’ve never seen the American one. Ira Madison III, co-host of Keep It! said a few years ago that he tried to watch the American version but when this hot guy on the show spoke and sounded like he was from Alabama, it took him out of the fantasy. Kinda same! I can only watch this if the contestants have accents I don’t understand and slang I don’t know.
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XO,
Kim
Okay, I'm sold. Will report back!
I have watched every season of Love Island and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. “Butts out dating” made me cackle. I agree, nothing tops UK, and I typically find it difficult to watch the US ones—they make me cringe on behalf of this country and the people seem far less interesting. BUT I’ve gotta say, the current season and the previous one got the drama turned ALL the way up and it helps fill the void when you’ve run out of UK episodes to watch.