Love Island: The Programme We Love to Hate (And Hate to Love)

The original ten islanders of the 2017 line up

Thirty years ago, many people never have predicted that the entertainment industry would stoop as low as to put ten singletons in a house and make them couple up after approximately 18 seconds of knowing them. And never did we think it would be so painfully addicting.

Love Island, which premièred in 2015 and is now running it's third series, is a television programme based around the ancestral notion that if you put a male and a female together, they'll eventually mate. Two weeks into series three and we've already had two 'couples' fornicate on live TV, with many more likely to follow in the upcoming weeks.

The luxury villa in Mallorca
includes deck chairs and a swimming pool

The Big Brother-esque show sees a number of bronzed peoples between the ages of around twenty and thirty living in a villa in Mallorca for a grand total of seven long weeks. At various stages throughout the process, the members of the house who don't have a partner are eliminated from the 'competition', and at the end, one couple wins.

The concept seems ridiculous and a bit animalistic, but, as they say, sex sells. This year was a bit of a slow starter, like a tractor with a rusty engine, but once it got out of the blocks, it became interesting and appallingly addictive.

Fourteen days have past since the original ten candidates entered the villa. Since then, three new males and two new females have crashed the party – and two unfortunate members have been chucked for not being attractive enough to find a lover.

Last year, I managed to catch glimpses of the programme when it was on, maybe as a boredom cure, or on YouTube. At times it hit the news – Then 'Miss Great Britain' Zara Holland had her title removed and subsequently left the villa after sleeping with one of the boys, Alex Bowen (now engaged to another co-star). For some reason it's what people want to see. And however hard it is to admit, I'm hooked as well.

The question is, why do humans enjoy so much the opportunity to watch other humans go about their daily lives? Is it cause we're not satisfied with our own – lack of drama perhaps? Can someone explain the staggering popularity of soap operas, and related shows, such as MTV's 'Ex On The Beach'?

The show is notorious for its night-vision cameras which
show couples sleeping together live on TV

Programmes like this, especially, are always under scrutiny. They're often branded as an inaccurate depiction of actual life, of glamourising casual sex, of causing young girls to aspire to achieve a body not possible without surgical enhancement. These people are supposedly just average 'members of the public' – but that is never the case, with most of them already have enjoyed a relative amount of fame in their life.

Take this year's line up, for example. Marcel Somerville was the first contestant to appear on the show. Random citizen? Nope. Marcel, as you've probably heard if you've been watching the show, was a member of early 2000's hip hop collective 'Blazing Squad' as a teen. Jessica Shears is a glamour model with a sizeable following on Instagram. Essex girl Olivia and Manchester lad Dom also model. And Camilla Thurlow, another islander, was once pictured outside a nightclub kissing Prince Harry.

To be fair, the show does its best to reduce its celebrity intake to a minimum. And on top of that, most of the people on the current series actually seem like genuine people. Camilla is a world away from the rest of the pack in terms of personality, being shy and reserved and not as wild as the rest. Late arrival Chris is blessed with that macho-man, TV star confidence and a dashingly pretty face, but was raised on a farm and, like many of the others, doesn't appear as thick as your regular TV star. Montana is an intelligent young girl but also has her fair share of banter, meaning the show doesn't leave you gritting your teeth in despair like many of us do when we find out our favourite TOWIE star can't locate the UK on a map.

But the star of the show – undoubtedly – is the voiceover. Iain Stirling, a former children's TV presenter on CBBC, writes his own scripts, and much like on Come Dine With Me, some of the stuff he comes out with will leave you doubled over in abdominal stitches because it's that funny.

Love Island may be just another one of those shows – after all, what do they do for the other eighteen hours of the day when the cameras seem to be turned off? But if you want some light evening entertainment this summer – almost every day for it's duration – then you might've found the one.