Love Island (ITV2) | ITVX
The Traitors: Australia (BBC Three) | iPlayer
Celebrity Save Our Sperm (Channel 4) | channel4.com
Heat (Channel 5) | My5
Either I’m high on Tanologist self-tan fumes or Love Island is watchable again. Now in its 10th series in this (sans celebrity) form, the ITV2 reality dating show juggernaut has stalled in recent times. Most significantly, there were serious duty of care problems around post-screening support and online bullying: ; there have been three suicides of people connected to the programme (contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis and presenter Caroline Flack).
As zingier rivals sprang up (Love Is Blind, in which couples converse and get engaged via separate pods before seeing each other; the fresh, sweetly riotous gay dating show I Kissed a Boy), Love Island also felt increasingly dry and old hat. An unlovely procession of deepfake islanders trudging in from the Instagram meat market. A formulaic slog of slurring, dead-eyed faux flirtation (“Yorr-a birr-o me”). There’s been little sense of the ratings smash and bona fide societal phenomenon (in 2018, more people applied to Love Island than to Oxbridge) that taught the target audience how to navigate the string-bikini-ed wild west of youth and pitched the nation into a fire-pit fever dream.
Is this a cautionary tale of franchise fatigue: the overworking of a format until it buckles? If I were to “deep it”, which is villa vernacular for overthinking (for older viewers, part of the fun is introducing such phrases into your general conversation and basking in the eternal scorn of your progeny), I’d say that in the rush to be a brand, Love Island forgot how to be great TV.
And now? It remains irritating (and worse): the theatre of cruelty meets the mobile disco of banality. Mangling together emotional immaturity, rigid courting rituals such as “closing off” (signalling optimum Love Island commitment) and flint-eyed careerism that would make The Apprentice contenders blush, it can feel like an endurance test for viewers.
Yet I see the green shoots of recovery. A sparky presenter (Maya Jama). More diversity (bodies, ethnicities), likable contestants (one, Whitney, is eccentric, small-screen gold). Established couples have detonated, risking everything (by “everything”, I mean post-villa brand ambassador opportunities, but still).
If passions are at times inflamed, teetering on toxic, they also seem genuine: one couple (Ty and Ella) have been emoting on the daybeds like an Asos Luxe Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Gaslighting has been exposed; “bro-code” called out for the chauvinistic free pass it is. Even Twitter is lively (for a while, Love Island was the dead goldfish floating in the hashtag tank). The show could still mess up, but right now the vital alchemy (emotion, humour, jeopardy) seems to be returning.
One reality TV rule that shows such as Love Island prove is that casting is the one true god. The same goes for gameshow The Traitors, now showing on BBC Three in the Australian version. Yes, an Australian version, which follows the US version, which followed the hugely successful UK version – all of them appearing within an eight-month period. Christ, give viewers a fighting chance to miss something! Are we back in the zone of franchise fatigue and overworked formats? Will television never learn?
Happily, The Traitors: Australia (all 12 episodes available to stream) makes for engrossing viewing. Smartly suited presenter Rodger Corser hams it up like an unctuous funeral director. Unlike the US version, which picked some contestants from other reality shows, here we are back with ordinary people (though there’s an excess of legal professionals and a psychic). The staples remain: a “banishment room”, with a big table evocative of Arthurian legend; breakfast room drama (who’s been “murdered” in the night?); anyone with delusions of superior psychological insight dispatched with swift brutality. This time, the traitors lurch down dark staircases in scarlet cloaks teamed with blingy gold masks.
Unfortunately, there are also the intolerably dull tasks to build the prize pot – again, imbued with all the white-knuckle suspense of a parents’ race on school sports day. But otherwise, this Traitors is just as absorbing a pageant of treachery and venal self-interest as the others. If there’s still an element of boxset Cluedo meets bargain bin murder weekend, you won’t catch me complaining.
There are intense moments in the Channel 4 documentary Celebrity Save Our Sperm. Presented by Dr Anand Patel, it’s a look into the nation’s deteriorating sperm count; one of the programme’s more startling statistics is that over the past 50 years, male fertility has halved. There’s also a 10-week challenge for participants (radio and television presenter Melvin Odoom; Made in Chelsea’s Ollie Locke; comic Russell Kane) to improve their own sperm.
While Odoom seems intrigued and Kane (already a father) arrives positively chipper, Locke is anxious (he and his husband are attempting to conceive with a surrogate). All three men, it transpires, have room for improvement. At this point, the change in atmosphere, the ratcheting up of apprehension, is notable as the men realise the effects of pollution, diet, smoking, heat and more. Kane sagely notes: “There’s an emotional link to my fertility and my sperm count.”
While sometimes the tone is over-jocular (“Chill those balls, boys”), there’s an unforgettable moment when a near-naked man is ushered in to demonstrate (readers of a delicate disposition, look away now) scrotum stretching for testicular good health. It’s quite the spectacle (I wrote in my notes “satanic bread dough”, but other more medically appropriate descriptions will be available). Just like the Björk song, the celebrities fall oh so quiet…
I’m not averse to Channel 5 thrillers, which occasionally feature good actors (Jason Watkins, Aneurin Barnard, Shirley Henderson) in brazenly overwrought melodramas. Sadly, the Australian-set four-part Heat is a dud, even though it stars the irrepressible Danny Dyer, who (and I say this with love) exudes the screen charisma of a Kwik-Fit Stanley Kowalski.
Featuring two families holidaying together, it’s one of those dramas in which everyone has a terrible secret (cash difficulties, affairs). The sex scenes are so sleazy and gratuitous that my eyeballs still feel dirty from watching them. A raging bushfire doubles throughout as a metaphor for life with all the subtlety of a blowtorch held to the toes. There is one brilliant bit involving Dyer action-hero-running through smoke and flames, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t intended as comedy. This is one to miss – unless you like your thrillers charred to an unintelligible cinder.
Star ratings (out of five)
Love Island ★★★
The Traitors: Australia ★★★★
Celebrity Save Our Sperm ★★★
Heat ★
What else I’m watching
The Great
(Lionsgate+)
Third series of the audacious, well acted and witty costume drama starring Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning. Bridgerton could do worse than watch and learn.
Joe Swash: Teens in Care
(BBC One)
Swash, whose mother used to foster children, presents this heartfelt documentary about teenagers in the British care system, featuring interviews with emotionally bruised but determined young people.
Five Star Kitchen: Britain’s Next Great Chef: The Final
(Channel 4)
Michel Roux Jr’s chef-ing competition stood out from the start with an astonishing prize – the chance to run the Palm Court restaurant at London’s Langham hotel. This exciting final reveals the winner.
