I’ve watched Love Island since its inception. Way back in 2015, when the cast chain-smoked and didn’t know the fame that awaited them.
It has never been a ‘good’ show, however you wish to define that word. It is not ‘high-brow’, it is not morally sound, it is not even the first of its kind. But, it has a certain secret sauce, a certain MSG-salty-addictiveness, a certain magic.
Controversy has followed it around, and there have been some truly heartbreaking Love Island moments (both on, and off, the show). It’s given us joy, too, and entertained us summer-after-summer.
In recent years, however, the show lost its spark. If I were to pinpoint this decline, it started in 2020 with the Winter edition. Love Island’s presenter, Caroline Flack, tragically died by suicide at the start of that same year. And rather than uniting fans, I believe the creators made mistake after mistake and left us with a soulless version of the ITV series.
There’s something producers never seemed to understand: you can safeguard the contestants, have a diverse and inclusive cast, and still make Love Island…entertaining. It’s not rocket science! Yet reality TV makes it feels like we’re asking for the world, in fact we are asking for basics.
We are only two weeks into season 10, so I’m aware there’s A LOT that could go wrong from this point but season 10, otherwise, has felt like a return to its glory days. Maya Jama is a big part of this success. The Winter 2023 version proved her chops at the job (not that any of us were in doubt), but the winter version has always been…kinda sh**, so it felt like a waste of her charisma. The summer version, however, is a perfect match. Maya creates a warmth with the contestants, and fits effortlessly into the dynamics. Something Caroline was always a pro at doing, too.
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