As the sun sets on this series of Love Island, our summer has again been dominated by swimwear-clad singletons forming new connections. For weeks, we’ve seen a conveyor belt of Islanders couple up, break up and, in some cases, make up. But since the longest relationships on the show have existed for only a few weeks, it’s sometimes hard not to think of them as very intense holiday flings.
There are no concerns regarding the authenticity of feelings in the new Amazon Prime series The One That Got Away, though. Hosted by the Australian-American singer Betty Who, it features six singles revisiting lost loves from a wide pool: past dates, crushes that were never taken to the next step, potential partners who “friend-zoned” and many instances of “right person, wrong time”. Daters are instructed to go to a “portal” (since Love Is Blind, a strange sci-fi element has become customary) and out of it emerges a potential suitor from their dating history. As if the portal were a time machine, contestants are given the chance to finally stop that ship from passing in the night.
