I watch Love Island in secret \u2014 in the kitchen while I\u2019m making dinner or with my laptop propped up on the handles of my exercise bike in my bedroom. I might pedal half-heartedly and watch an argument unfold between one bikinied woman and another about who is the fake one, who is the one who \u201cstands on business\u201d and who will always \u201csay it with my chest\u201d (not what you think. Checks notes: something about speaking your truth).<\/p>\n
When I told my colleagues this, even the twentysomething Gen Z ones looked aghast. Love Island is so 2019, they insisted. There hasn\u2019t been a good season since Molly-Mae left with Tommy Fury and a multimillion-pound career. And was I OK?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know. Am I? I\u2019m 38 years old. I wake up to Radio 4. Right now on my way into work I\u2019m reading The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O\u2019Farrell, a Women\u2019s Prize shortlisted novel. Or I\u2019m scrolling one of three news apps on my phone. I\u2019m keen on politics and current affairs. I spend my working days at my desk editing serious features. And I love love triangles.<\/p>\n
Gen Z might be the target audience for the long-running ITVX reality series, whose 12th series finished this week. It was a runaway hit online this year: 13 million people follow Love Island accounts on social media and there were 87,000 video uploads on TikTok, 30-second clips watched in turn by millions. Yet I\u2019ll wager that a good portion of the stalwart 1.2 million traditional viewer figures (down from its 2019 peak of 6 million) are exhausted geriatric millennial mothers. It\u2019s the TV version of Melvyn Bragg\u2019s In Our Time. Reassuring, soporific, it asks nothing of me.<\/p>\n
My husband and I work full-time, look after two kids under five and run a daily relay of nursery pick-ups and drop-offs, then trains to and from the office. We stare at departure boards and hope to God this one won\u2019t be delayed. By the time one of us is home and has reheated whatever dinner we have batch-cooked for the kids at the start of the week, done their bathtime, books and bedtime, I for one don\u2019t have it in me to watch a big, serious prestige drama.<\/p>\n
Luckily for me, Love Island is on most nights and I can store up episodes. There\u2019s nothing easier than the endless repetition of hearing one contestant say earnestly and pointlessly to the object of his affection around a fire pit: \u201cYou\u2019re beautiful inside and out.\u201d And there\u2019s nothing more inevitable than the narrative arc of the final weeks of the series, when the last couples all go \u201cexclusive\u201d and we see the ritual of women jumping up and down and congratulating whichever friend has just been \u201cwifed off\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Gen Z v Gen X: what we spend our money on now<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n I even like the audacity of the show\u2019s bad boy Harry, who shakes his head whenever a new girl enters the villa. He might have told one woman their connection was \u201cundeniable\u201d but that was 30 minutes ago. Now he is about to flirt with this new bombshell. He turns to his fellow male contestants as he eases himself off the sunbed and says gleefully, regretfully, \u201cThis is no good.\u201d<\/p>\n I agree, it is no good. And yet Love Island is the perfect dead-eyed content to watch passively, between hauling one mixed-up pile of still sodden laundry onto the side to sort through. I never watch it in real time, only ever an episode at a time a few days later on ITVX\u2019s catch-up, so I haven\u2019t yet seen the final in which (spoiler alert to self) Toni, the outspoken Vegas drinks girl, and Cach, the gentlemanly dancer from London, take home the \u00a350,000 prize. Frankly, it doesn\u2019t matter to me who wins.<\/p>\n \u2022 Read our TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n I feel somewhat vindicated that Caitlin Moran recently revealed on these pages<\/a> that she is watching the show too. This series, she notes, has a particular undercurrent of misogyny. It\u2019s best captured by the phrase \u201cyou\u2019re trouble\u201d \u2014 something the boys use on the girls all the time. It\u2019s a sinister compliment, the subtext being: \u201cWith your good looks, you\u2019ve asked for this.\u201d And then there is their bad behaviour of playing one woman off against another. True to form, for much of the series the women argue among themselves, forgetting that the men are the cause of the fallout.<\/p>\n My husband can\u2019t stand Love Island and I hate watching it while he\u2019s in the room \u2014 the eye rolls and sighs coming from the other side of the couch are too annoying. He\u2019d rather watch the Tour de France highlights.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when I retreat to my exercise bike for the belated next instalment of who\u2019s been dumped from the villa.<\/p>\n Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a> , the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a>, the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to watch<\/a> and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I watch Love Island in secret \u2014 in the kitchen while I\u2019m making dinner or with my laptop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[77,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-321764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114980298582731574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}