It has been just over a month since the finale of Love Island. Fans will have to wait months more until the winter edition launches in January with a brand new host in the wake of Laura Whitmore’s departure (hopefully, the bubbly AJ Odudu, if there’s any justice in the world). In the meantime, streamers are trying to sate us with knock-off versions of TV’s most popular reality show.
One attempt to capitalise on the post-Love Island comedown is Netflix’s Dated & Related, a series that on first glance appears to be almost an exact replica of the ITV2 series: swimming costume-clad singletons are sent to a sun-baked villa in the hope of finding love – featuring regular eliminations, bombshell contestants and a cash prize. Its difference, however, is a familial twist. It is thankfully not the twist that you might expect from its slightly icky, provocative title – contestants are not dating their relatives (although given the way the reality TV landscape is heading, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a show with this premise is in production). Singletons head to a retreat in the south of France accompanied by their brother or sister – and in one case, a cousin – who are also on the lookout for love. They act as one another’s “wingperson” as they search for their soulmates and hope to win £100,000 in the process. With its sibling double dates, Netflix has billed Dated & Related as the “most awkward dating show in history”, while the press has promised it will address the “Love Island blues” or “fill that Love Island-shaped hole in your heart”.
The reality is, it simply doesn’t. If anything, Dated & Related, like the many other Love Island-alikes that have sprouted over the years, only serves to remind us that we are not watching Love Island. By being almost indistinguishable from it bar one, feeble twist, it very visibly comes up short. Dated & Related is largely tepid and tame, lacking the inherent drama of the show it seems to be inspired by. This was the case two years ago, when Too Hot to Handle premiered, sending a group of singles to paradise, to meet, mingle and remain celibate for their chance to win $100,000. Melinda Berry, the breakout star of its arguably stronger second season, hosts Dated & Related. At least her new show isn’t as unapologetic in its imitation of Love Island, given that the Essex and London-based contestants of Too Hot to Handle felt so close to the usual archetypes that they could actually have cast a range of Casa Amor rejects.
Reality TV is partial to an island and Love Island hardly pioneered the concept of a summer romance – shows like Ex on the Beach, Are You the One and Temptation Island all predate it and have similar backdrops. But programmes that ape Love Island are becoming increasingly monotonous, regardless of whatever wacky spin they use to differentiate it. Think HBO Max’s Fboy Island – a dating reality television series that focuses on three women trying to identify 24 men as either “fboys” or “nice guys” for a cash prize. Then there’s Love in the Flesh, a BBC Three offering that sees couples who have been connected online for a period of time brought together in person in a Greek beach house … on an “island of love”. There really is only so much you can do with sexy singletons coupling up in a villa at a luxury holiday location.
Nonetheless, producers seem to think that the aforementioned ingredients will lead to a surefire hit. But evidence that it won’t includes not only Dated & Related, but Survival of the Fittest, ITV2’s original answer to a winter Love Island, which launched at the height of Love Island mania in 2018. It was a battle of the sexes-type show that, like the Love Island winter series that launched in 2019, was shot in South Africa. It was also, like Love Island since 2019, hosted by Laura Whitmore. At the show’s peak it pulled in only 600,000 viewers, and ran into trouble when Dani Dyer fell and injured her shoulder in the first episode – a contestant who was cast in Love Island the following year.
More imagination in the dating show genre is needed. Netflix’s bonkers Love Is Blind (in which couples initially date without seeing each other’s faces) broke the mould, and the premise of Sexy Beasts (which saw daters transformed with prosthetic makeup into animal and mythical creatures) made waves by being different. Channel 4’s Five Dates a Week and First Dates are relatively simple concepts but set themselves apart by avoiding the convoluted twists and gimmicks of many other shows. Love Island’s formula works because it’s Love Island; producers should look into creating the next Love Island as opposed to simply trying to recreate it.