Five Million Britons Tune in, But is Love Island ‘Opium of the People’ or ‘Light Entertainment’?

The latest series of hit TV show Love Island finishes in the UK on Monday evening and Tommy Fury - brother of boxer Tyson Fury - and his girlfriend Molly-Mae Hague are the hot favourites to win the £50,000 prize.

ITV’s chief executive Carolyn McCall said last week Love Island was the most profitable show on the channel, and UberEats reportedly paid £5 million to sponsor the series, which gets five million viewers per episode, most of them aged between 16 and 34.

The current series, which is due to end on Monday, 29 July, is filmed in Majorca but next year ITV plans to add a second winter series, which will be filmed in South Africa.

​Two former contestants - Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gradon - have committed suicide in the last year but Ms McCall said it had been almost two years since they appeared on the show and it was misleading and “strange” to link their deaths to Love Island.

Love Island is fairly cheap to make and the format has proved popular in Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Australia and is set to be rolled out later this year in Hungary, Poland, New Zealand, Poland and the United States. 

H. N. Lloyd, an author and social commentator, has said he felt Love Island and other reality TV shows were part of the “slow dumbing down of TV and society in general.”

“Karl Marx said religion was the opium of the people, well know the opium of the people is watching people with all the charm, wit and sophistication of a plate of mince rutting in a Spanish villa. We’ve turned people with no discernible talent or personality into heroes and figures to aspire to be like.”

Naomi Watson, a teacher from London, disagreed: “I watch Love Island and I enjoy the fact that it’s light-hearted after a long, hard day at work. It’s a nice way to unwind, to watch something that doesn’t require much mental power. There is something quite comforting in watching other people’s drama. In 2019 there are lots of different things to watch on TV. It’s about choice and variety. They are making it because there is an audience for it. If people want to watch documentaries they can watch them on the History Channel or Netflix.”

​Her friend, Eloisa Fitzgerald, who is also a teacher in London, said: “I watch it because it’s a way to de-stress. I find it funny. It’s not serious. It’s just temporary, a short experience that people are having and you can see how relationships develop and learn about people’s values.”

She said: “It’s not dumbing down TV. It’s just the way the world is moving. There are a lot of reality programmes and people love watching things like Gogglebox, which is hilarious.”

Ms Fitzgerald said she was a bit “concerned” about the influence Love Island might have on children and she said parents should not let them watch it under a certain age.

​“Too many parents don’t keep an eye on what their kids watch,” she said.

Mr Lloyd said: “What really annoys me about Love Island and these other shows is we live in a country where people should be really, really angry. We’ve got one of the most incompetent governments ever, where a fifth of the populace live in poverty. Schools, the police and the NHS are massively under-funded. The masses should be angry as Hell and out on the streets protesting. Instead they’re sat at home, their minds numbed by reality TV and the latest flavour of Pringles.”

​Mr Lloyd said he felt Love Island was “damaging” not just to the viewers but also to the contestants.

“They get their five minutes of fame and then are left to cope in the real world. The Mental Health Foundation has said that Love Island gives young people unrealistic expectations of body image, wrapped up as being aspirational,” said Mr Lloyd.

He said: “People watch it and think ‘I want to be like that. I want to be like them. I want that lifestyle’. Yet they have no talent or discernible way of becoming famous. They think fame just comes to them without having to put the graft in.”

​Ms Watson again disagrees: “You can actually use it as a talking point to discuss with young people about unrealistic body goals and some schools are using it in PHSE (Personal Social Health and Economic education) lessons to debate body image and mindfulness.”

She said: “It’s just light entertainment and people should not take it too seriously. I certainly don’t aspire to be like some of the contestants. But I imagine some viewers may have an unhealthy relationship with them.”

​Mr Lloyd accused other shows, like The X Factor, of deliberately mocking people with mental health issues and “getting them on the show so that viewers can laugh at and mock them like a sad and tawdry 21st century Victorian freak show.”

Ms Watson and Ms Fitzgerald were both concerned about how black women in particular struggle to succeed in Love Island.

​This year Yewande Biala, a scientist from Dublin, crashed out of this year’s show early as did Samira Mighty last year.

Ms Fitzgerald said: “Black contestants find it difficult to get into the final. This year it was Yewande - who was very intelligent and attractive - and last year Samira, so it highlights the challenges particularly black women have in forming relationships with men.”

​Ms Watson said: “In that micro-habitat it amplifies everything and especially attitudes men have towards women. Samira was comparing herself to Megan (Barton-Hanson) who was fake. She was built in a factory.”

Last month Samira told the Mail on Sunday the producers of Love Island were failing when it comes to diversity.

​She said Love Island would have “token” black women contestants but she claimed they were failing to select men who wanted women who were not “blonde with big boobs.”

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