Opinion

Claire Simpson: Is Love Island the TV show we deserve?

For contestants, the programme offers instant fame, potential book and clothing deals
For contestants, the programme offers instant fame, potential book and clothing deals For contestants, the programme offers instant fame, potential book and clothing deals

"The public wants what the public gets," The Jam sang at the turn of the 1980s. They were raging against Thatcherism and voter apathy but the lyric still applies to much of the media we consume. Songs that we hate on an initial listen can turn into favourites if we play them often enough and the same applies to television.

Reality dating show Love Island is a prime example. The programme began as a celebrity version in 2005, featuring such stars as professional dater Calum Best and former Westlife bodyguard Fran Cosgrave (no, me neither).

In its most recent form, the show got relatively low ratings in its first two series but became a popular culture phenomenon in its third, partly through relentless exposure. It turns out that if you tune into the daft shenanigans of a group of fame-hungry twenty-somethings in a Majorca villa often enough, you too will get sucked into their world.

For contestants, the programme offers instant fame, potential book and clothing deals and regular offers to make appearances at provincial nightclubs up and down Britain. With all the money that’s on offer, it’s no wonder that thousands more applied to take part in this year’s Love Island than tried to enter Oxford and Cambridge combined.

TV’s own Richard Madeley agreed. “The cult of celebrity and instant fame has become almost universal, particularly among young people,” he told BBC’s Question Time.

“Young people see becoming a celebrity as their passport to wealth and success and in many ways they’re right.”

Putting aside the point that Love Island takes in proportionally more contestants from working class and ethnic minority backgrounds than Oxbridge can ever dream of, at least taking part in the show doesn’t mean that young people are crippled with heavy student loans.

I find the programme escapist fun in the same way that Big Brother and Sex and the City were to the previous generation. After a day of trying to keep up with the relentless news cycle, it’s relaxing to drink a giant mug of tea and watch a group of genetically blessed doofuses try and outsmart each other with talk of ‘game playing’ and ‘I’m not here to make friends’. I like Love Island in the same way as my mum likes Home and Away or my younger sister loves Made in Chelsea - it’s full of beautiful people saying ludicrous things in an attractive setting.

The show works best when it centres on its own claustrophobic world where people desperately try and pair off with someone, anyone, rather than risk having to return to reality.

The ridiculousness of the whole set-up was perfectly captured on Friday night when one of the female contestants attempted to have a serious discussion about politics.

“What do you think about Brexit?” she asked.

“What’s that?” one of the other women replied, then, clearly concerned about the environmental consequences of leaving the European Union, added: “Does that mean we won’t have any trees?”

The programme has been held up as an example of everything from the dangerousness of celebrity culture to the general dumbing-down of society. But then there have been moral panics over television shows since the first programmes were broadcast. Brilliant dramas I Claudius and The Singing Detective got some viewers in a tizzy over their depiction of sex and violence. Comedy Brass Eye, which weirdly managed to predict so much of our media landscape today, drew a huge number of complaints, mainly for making minor TV presenters and celebrities look stupid.

For some, the show is everything that’s wrong with the youth of today - more interested in looking good on their Instagram accounts than working hard. Yet haven’t older people always complained about those younger?

“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words.” So wrote Greek scholar Hesiod in the eighth century B.C. He might as well have been writing about Love Island.

The programme does treat its contestants like slow-witted show ponies who need signs to show them where the villa’s bedroom is. But what some of the contestants lack in general knowledge, they make up for in creating oddly gripping TV. And they have the good sense to realise that for the rare few, 15 minutes of fame is enough to give you a decent financial start in life. Love Island isn’t ground-breaking. It’s not Planet Earth or Breaking Bad. But in a decade when a reality TV star can become US president, it might be the programme we deserve.