With love island all stars season 2 just finishing, after dominating our screens every night at 9pm for the past five weeks, I’ve seen a lot of criticism facing the show and it’s predictability. This criticism has followed the show for the past few seasons and it seems no matter what adjustments the show makes, the same comments appear.
Love island has taken over our screens for the past 10 summers, now even invading our winters too. It’s gone through 11 seasons, hundreds of young islanders and new formats, yet at its core it remains the same: a reality tv programme about young men and women finding love. While the show remains popular with young gen z women in particular, and at times it seems you can’t escape the show on your social media, in recent years the question of the longevity of the show keeps arising. While love island has introduced new factors in the show, such as the all stars version of the past two winters, and introducing new challenges, many viewers have agreed the show has gone stale and lacks the excitement it had in the first few seasons.
In Love Island’s most popular years; season 6 aired in 2019 comes to mind for me as the show’s peak, it dominated our summers and it became a ritual for young gen z women to sit down together every night at 9pm to watch each episode. However, in recent seasons it’s become more common for viewers to watch the best clips on Titkok or Instagram instead of turning on their tv and engaging with the episode for the full hour. While this could also be due to our decreasing concentration levels, there is something to be said for why only a few minutes out of an hour show are actually deemed worth watching.
The main issue I’ve found with Love Island today is it is simply repetitive, and it has been for the past number of seasons. The same few storylines repeat year after year that it becomes too predictable to be completely engaged with the show. Even Casa Amore, where the boys and girls are split into their own villas with new contestants coming in, which used to be the most anticipated part of the show, has become repetitive with any drama being solved within a day and the original couples coming back together; mostly as they know this storyline as won in the past.
While Love Island has tried to make changes to keep the show interesting, none of them have made such an impact to erase talk of the show becoming boring. One of their introductions was bringing in an All Stars version of the show which began last year and ran during the winter months. This version saw previously islanders come back to have a second chance of finding love on the show. While this premise was new, I did question whether bringing back old islanders we’ve seen before was the best solution to combat the show becoming stale and repetitive. Many viewers also had issues with the fact the show was supposed to be the most iconic contestants from the past, yet many who re-appeared had actually only been on their seasons for a few episodes and weren’t overly popular; going against the shows ‘all-stars’ premise.
The American version of Love Island was very popular last summer, and it highlighted viewers’ issues with the UK version. It had the freshness that Love Island UK had at the beginning that we are lacking today. Part of this was due to the contestants being truly authentic as they didn’t realise the success they could have after the show. In the UK version, the contestants are too occupied with the public’s perception, and want to play it safe in order to be popular with the public, and make a career on social media when they leave the show. This results in seemingly the same people appearing season after season, which results in repetitive T.V. It also results in a lack of real drama, which the audience craves in reality t.v.
Despite these complaints, the viewership does remain high and no matter how much we complain about the show, the majority will still tune in year after year. Although, it seems no matter what changes are made, Love Island can never return to its original popularity, and it’s only a matter of time before a new reality show comes along and replaces it fully.