Gen Z Trends: Love Island is Officially Cancelled and the Reality Dating Shows to Fill the Void

Sad news for the reality dating shows’ world: Love Island has been cancelled. The Coronavirus outbreak has claimed a UK TV victim that was much appreciated by Gen Z. The popular summer dating show where couples live together in a villa in Mallorca won’t be shoot for safety fears.

With six seasons under its belt and a seventh postponed to 2021, Love Island has seen its popularity drastically increase since its inception in 2015, with the average viewers growing from 500 thousand to 5 million, and even receiving a BAFTA TV Award for “Best Reality and Constructed Factual” in 2018. The show’s format was so successful that it spread beyond the UK borders, generating a franchise with ongoing instalments in anglophone countries such as USA, Australia and New Zealand, but also in European states such as Germany, Hungary and Romania.

While the audience may cry the lack of the islanders’ shenanigans this year, it’s not like TV and VoD services are devoid of reality dating shows to compensate. Because, yes, Gen Z, Millennials and pretty much any other generation is here for the drama (and the memes, of course), and someone needs to bring it on.

In the wake of the uprising interest towards these TV products, Netflix seems to have hoarded on reality dating shows: from blind date-based programs (such as the huge hit Love is Blind) to contests where the participants are forced to live together (a possible heir to Love Island could be the hilarious Too Hot to Handle), to the adventures of real couples or ex-couples (Back with the Ex, Extreme Engagement).

But what makes the audience flock towards these shows? One too-easy answer could be boredom, which is fast to strike during these quarantine times. Yet there probably are a couple more characteristics worth noting.

Since the dawn of reality TV, reality shows have to be full of drama. They force regular human reactions through tricks of production and accurate casting, creating the conditions for emotion-charged scenes and rowdy confrontations. In reality dating shows, a further element contributes to the explosive mix: overt sexual tension, the cornerstone on which the entire flick capitalizes. This way, the shows become bingeable, and you can’t help but want to know who’s gonna throw the next tantrum, who’s gonna scheme against the others, who’s gonna end up with who.

The addictiveness of the programs comes hand in hand with their lightness: the screenplays often don’t take themselves too seriously and don’t pretend to discuss rocket science. They aim at easy (sometimes trivial) entertainment, which most of the time relies on the shoulders of the protagonists.

The cast is, in fact, the real gem of these shows. People who participate in reality TV are often eccentric and do over-the-top things, thus having the potential of becoming the audience’s favourites or the ones they love to hate. And what generates reaction and attachment (even if just to see what kind of absurdity they are gonna come up with to get the boy/girl) usually makes the audience stick.

Plus, these shows are just pure fuel for meme culture! All the naughtiness and nonsense are the stuff of dreams for meme experts such as the Gen Zers, ready to ironize on everything and everyone.

Not that reality dating shows don’t have issues, mind us. Quite the contrary.

In a commentary on Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle, vlogger and YouTuber Tiffany Ferg pretty much sums up everything that is problematic about this type of programs. Addressing the new super popular show where young people who love hookup culture may win a monetary prize only if they don’t have sex/engage in touchy situations with each other (yep), Ferg points out what often makes the eyebrows of the audience rise a bit too much about the dating shows.

First, casting often lacks diversity. Latinos or Asian people are nowhere in sight in Too Hot to Handle, as well as in other shows. Also, the contestants have standardized appearances most of the time, especially in Love Island-ish programs: model-like bodies, thin girls, muscular guys, and close to none of them with, hum, let’s say, detectable brilliant intelligence. And the audience is starting to be wary of this “void guy with perfect abs gets void girl with perfect hair” narration. One of the top comments to Ferg’s video reads: “where are the sexy people with great personalities? we need a dating show with average-looking, yet really interesting people and it should be called “7.5”.

Another issue with the casting is the sprawling heteronormativity: being straight is assumed to be the (unrealistic) standard in these shows, with non-binary people not even taken into consideration (as another top comment says about Too Hot to Handle, “Can you imagine if asexual people had scammed their way onto this show? They would have made absolute bank”). What is worse is that dating programs may rely on queerbaiting to create engagement, something that really vexes the audience (“So instead of getting real bisexuals they got party girls who will go gay for drama??? Omg whet”).

On the matter of the format itself, some concerns also arise. What is sensational in its first season because of the sense of novelty and originality, may become predictable very soon if it’s not able to incorporate new catchy elements. Also, the editing and the dynamics may start feeling all the same — it’s not by chance that Too Hot to Handle has been defined “chaste Love Island”.

What is for sure, however, is that some of the shows’ contestants were able to significantly build on their fame after the experience. They are largely followed on social networks (two examples: Olivia and Alex Bowen from Love Island, who together make almost 4 million Instagram followers), they score proficuous sponsorships (another islander, Amber Gill, became the brand ambassador for MissPap for one million pounds) and they even get to start their own merchandise or fashion lines (Too Hot to Handle’s queen Francesca Farago, from the peak of her 3.7 million Instagram followers, recently launched an ethical swimwear line called Farago The Label). Moreover, they return in the reunion special series of their show, an entertaining gimmick that seems to keep the ball rolling and to prevent the memories of these characters from fading instantly.

So, what do you think will be the future of reality dating shows? Do you plan to jump on the trend and/or revolutionize it from the inside? Let us know what you think about all this drama, we’re always in for a chat!

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This is part of YAD — Understanding Young Audiences Digest: a free monthly digest on young audiences for VOD and TV professionals. We’ve analysed millions of data points and we don’t mind sharing some of them — if this could help channels and commissioners to reach Gen Z, by understanding their needs, behavioural traits and intrinsic cultural values.

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