Love Island is back! Does anyone care? Well, 12 seasons since it began and 7 since its high water mark - when Tommy Fury gave Maura “fanny flutters” - it’s back for the Best Summer Ever, or so Maya Jama tells us, while her eyes tell us something very different.
It’s a few years since I last watched the show. It hasn’t changed too much. Is the whole series shoppable now? I’m too old to figure that out. And I don’t think any of the boys’ white trousers would quite suit my skin tone, unless ‘corpse’ is this season’s look. I fear I’d give people ‘the ick’.
Ah, ‘the ick’, which at this stage of human civilisation is the most abhorrent trait a person could possess. Better to be a serial killer than give people the ick. Though of course, serial killing is a choice, whereas you may give people the ick just by revealing a mild quirk of your personality. Which to the Love Island girls could mean liking rugby or having a preference for flip-flops over sliders.
We learn about such no-no’s in the first half of an opening episode that simply crawled by, like one of the slugs that seems to have died on the contestants’ eyebrows. But I’m not here to sneer at young people and their make-up choices, I’m here to sneer at young people and everything they do, under the guise of a review.
So yes, the first half featured the girls entering the villa first, which they seemed to think was some kind of high-class paradise, despite the sign saying ‘Eat, Sleep, Crack On, Repeat’, and the fact that it looks like a soft play area with an unfenced pool. It made me fret, because what was immediately apparent was that these people entering the villa are children.
And I don’t just mean they seem young to a middle-aged man, I mean they’re young even for twentysomethings… like they all talk and act like they’re three years old. Someone pull a cover over than pool before one of them tries to walk straight across it.
Anyway, the girls squeal for hours then talk about the types they like in men, intercut with their personal intro interviews. We’ll come to the boys in a minute but the girls are mostly fixated on being princesses and meeting their Prince Charming.
Shakira is a literal princess, or at least one who dresses as Disney princesses for children’s parties. You sense she’ll be popular in the house.
She says ‘I need Love Island to find my Prince Charming.’
Also trying to find Prince Charming is Alima, who calls herself a hopeless romantic before declaring, “you need money to give me the princess treatment I deserve.” She pauses and smiles sweetly (or is it psychotically?), adding: “Hope my Prince Charming is out there!”
Meghan is a payroll specialist who complains, “no one in my office is fit, no one in the area is fit, no one at the gym is fit.” She adds that her type is, “a naughty boy. I always attract the wrong ones but then I give them my heart.” Clearly locked into doom spiral, she needs a nice guy in the villa, but let’s just hope they’re fit.
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Sophie is a motivational speaker and an author, but despite being the brainy one she also looks for wrong ‘uns waving “big red flags.” However, she hopefully gets real and says, “my Prince Charming is not going to turn up at my house, hopefully he’ll be at the villa.”
(spoiler alert: he isn’t).
On it goes, it’s like a reboot of Tron where you’re trapped in the Tinder app.
Megan from Dublin is next, who comes up with this phrase: “if they are shit in bed that’ll come back and hit me in the face.” One of those moments as a person, and a viewer, where you have to question your choices in life.
By this stage the girls are chanting, “we want the boys, we want the boys!” They fill in the waiting time to ‘talk’. Middle-aged viewers learn a few new phrases:
“I love medium-ugly boys.”
“My type is a short king.”
“I’m entering my soft girl era.”
I have no idea what any of this means.
“The ick.” I know what that one means!
One of them says, “I don’t like people with a lot of Instagram highlights.” Which kind of seems fair enough actually. Another adds solemnly, “I don’t like men in flip-flops… sliders are fine.” On reflection, that’s fair enough too.
But before you can warm to them, Maya Jama walks into the villa in slo-mo. She is mostly seen in slo-mo and when she isn’t, she seems mortified to be there. It’s a coup to have her back in the show, though when she sits down for a girly chat you can see her glazing over, dreaming of bigger things, until someone wakes everyone up with the phrase:
“You’ve been dickmatised.”
Which deserves one of the Nobel Prizes. Literature or Science, I’m not sure.
But at last here come the possessors of the dicks - the boys! Of course, they’re all built like 80s action heroes, but they’re still a weird bunch, not Prince Charmings more Mummys Boys.
What happens is, the girls see a few dating profile words from each boy written on a sign, and they have to stand by their preferred sign according to which one they like the sound of. The oldest and wisest, Sophie, heads straight for the one that says, ‘Commodities Broker.’
Alima likes the sound of Blu, who in his description says he want to ‘drink margaritas with sexy senoritas’. Alima feels a connection and says, “Is he Spanish? I speak Portuguese.” Foreign languages... pretty much all the same, right?
The boys start to arrive and we see their intro videos.
Here’s Ben, a 23 year-old taxi driver from Gloucester who seems to be putting on a South London accent. He says in his taxi work he “always picks up girls who are fit,” which is worrying. Shakira seems to like him though.
Megan in contrast looks unimpressed when her choice arrives. He turns out to be Dejon, a personal trainer from London who says he doesn’t get rejected ever by girls but says his “heart is too big, I’ve got so much love to give.” However, when he says he likes to go out until 4am, Megan is not impressed and says her first impression is “50-50”. Harsh.
And here comes Sophie’s Commodities Broker… he’s Harry, not just a trader but a semi-pro footballer. He says, “I like to go up to girls in the gym and say, ‘I’m Harry.’ It works…” Does it?
Harry also has one of those Roman Kemp haircuts where it looks like he’s balancing a Cornish pasty on his head. Sophie is not sold on him.
Connor is next, a rugby player, which isn’t ideal for Helena who had said moments before, “I don’t like rugby players.” On Connor’s VT he says he’s a mummy’s boy and in fact, “I go for girls quite similar to my mother.”
Blu also has some mother issues. He works in construction in Marbella, where his mum owns a sex shop; he says he, “gets all the sex products he wants.” Lovely stuff. Anyway, it does indeed mean that he speaks Spanish as Alima suspected – he confirms, “that’s why I put sexy senoritas down.” – and she tells him she speaks Spanish as well as Portuguese. “Que pasa?” he asks. Alima replies… well, she can’t. “We can work on it!” says Blu, kindly.
My favourite boy is Tommy, who looks like a young Nicholas Cage cast as an ice cream van driver. He’s another mummy’s boy – “she makes my packed lunch every day” – but he says he’s a romantic and he gets on with Megan because they both have Sicilian heritage. Quite sweet those two.
Anyway, after that they all go off for various couple chats, some more awkward than others. Sophie the motivation speaker has a chat with Harry the trader, which is excruciating. She says she’s looking for a husband and will know him when she she sees him. Quick to be offended, he asks, “do you think the way I look is not like your husband?”
Sophie then reveals her life changed when she was involved in a fire accident and has some burn scars. Harry comments afterwards, “She’s a little bit too much for me.”
Dejon and Meghan get over the “50-50” thing and start getting along, coming across as fairly normal in this context. Meanwhile, Tommy the nice Sicilian ice cream man tells Megan he wants “someone who my mum will like,” and you can almost hear his mum screaming, ‘don’t tell a girl that!’
And… and… oh god I’m invested already.
Jama reappears at the end with her best Claudia Winkleman in The Traitors tone to bring a twist at the end. Toni arrives into the villa - an American!
She says she’s a “Las Vegas pool cabana girl,” whatever that means. Like a cleaner? I don’t know, but she seems to be saying that’s a hot thing to be and she strides into the villa with ‘main character energy’ or whatever, and all the girls look annoyed at the sight of her.
Jama explains Toni has to choose one of the boys to take for herself. She goes for Ben the taxi driver, leaving poor princess Shakira single and at risk of leaving the villa. She has 24 hours to persuade one of the boys to leave their current girl and couple up with her instead.
Who’s going to be tuning in to find out? Oh Christ, it’s me isn’t it? Goodbye summer.