Love Island 2018 - review: The return of a social experiment that has nothing to do with romance

ITV2’s Love Island is not about romance, and it does not pretend to be. It is about having a nice bum. The introductory package shows a female bum and an arm holding a whip. “Get ready for the ultimate summer of love,” says a voice, “Welcome to Paradise”. That is subjective.

It takes place in an evil barn conversion in Majorca. It has to be held in a hot country, as an excuse for wearing almost no clothing. If ITV2 couldn’t afford Majorca, Love Island would take place in a sandpit in Walthamstow and it would be called Love Sandpit. There is fake grass, a room full of “brand new” double beds and “a fancy sofa”. This may be prime-time TV designed to sell beauty products – it is “proudly” sponsored by Superdrug - but it is also a sociological experiment that exposes, or rather reminds, how conventional people are - even if they are having sex on television for the promise of money.

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The game is this: six men and five women, all improbably toothy, are required to “couple up” for the run. If they survive to be voted “favourite couple” they win £50,000.  If you are not in a couple you are invited “to clear out”, so you will do anything to stay in a couple. The argument for Reality TV is that it features working-class people, rather than Tom Hiddleston, but, since they are obliged to perform sexual acts with semi-strangers to get there, I wonder about the true extent of their emancipation. 

The girls arrive first in a jeep, like the overture to the petrol fight in Zoolander, in which male models fight with petrol hoses, and blow themselves up. They are all wearing bikinis and high heels, apart from one iconoclast, who is wearing shorts. I do not know if it is mandatory. I think it must be. They speak in screams and gasps. Their favourite expletive is, “Oh my God!”

“I don’t usually use big words,” says Hayley, a model from Liverpool. In comes Kendall, relatively old at 26, like Yoda, the manager of a shoe shop. She wants someone down to earth, whatever the hell that means. Then there is Dani, the daughter of Danny Dyer from EastEnders. She is a barmaid: “I am really good at pulling a pint, you have to get a good head on it, they get the hump otherwise”.

There is also Samira, who seems fairly normal and so is marked for an early TV death, and Laura, an air hostess from Scotland. She has had nine boyfriends; she pinched the second from a friend. The villain, then. 

Caroline Flack is the presenter, or pimp, in a shiny yellow dress like a coin. “Are we in the mood for love?” she asks. “Is it too soon to spoon?” They don’t know. For women who are almost naked, they seem quite innocent. Because the costume is just that – a costume.

Now the boys. The women can step forward to indicate they “fancy” them, but the boys choose; they can take a woman who is already coupled.

Love Island 2018 contestants: The full line-up

There is Niall, 23, a student from Coventry, with Hermione Granger’s wand tattooed on his arm. He used to be ugly, he says, he had his ears pinned back. Kendall steps forward, and he takes her.

“Who is next?” asks Caroline. Let it be Woody Allen, I pray. It isn’t. It’s Alex George, an A&E doctor, with a smooth face and rosebud lips. He looks like a psychopath but since this is ITV2, where the middle-class man is the villain, I may be wrong. No girl steps forward so he takes Laura; villain to villain.  “I do fancy you,” she says weakly, already defiled by the medium she is lost in.

Then there is Wes, an engineer who loves treating girls “like queens”. Laura steps forward to escape Alex, and he takes her; Alex goes to the sub’s bench, which in Love Island is a sun lounger. Then there is Eyal who wants someone with “some depth to them” – he takes Hayley – and Jack, a pen-seller.  “This pen is going to change your life,” he says, to demonstrate pen salesmanship. He takes Dani, and so Samira gets Alex by default. Both are unhappy. 

The jeopardy is provided by Adam, a personal trainer from Newcastle. He will steal a girl within 24 hours and he is very handsome, apart from the eyes, which are empty as glass.  But his abs are a magical weapon. 

The rest is Adam flirting with girls, and boys fretting about it. Dani and Kendall are happy with their men. They know how to be pleasing; on Reality TV, sluts always get cut. Only villain Laura asks for what she wants. “Head says Wes, heart says Adam,” she says, in a secret conversation with a camera and, therefore, the planet. “Not heart,” she adds after a pause, “sexual. Things”.

Soon they will mate, but prudishly and under duvets, so viewers can lie to themselves about watching pornography in which they are faintly emotionally invested all summer long.