Love Island 2022: It takes off on hormonal autopilot, then drops a minor bombshell

Love Island (Virgin Media Two, 9pm) is back, with some tweaks. There’s a new villa in sun-kissed Majorca, and the producers have drawn a line under the old group games that involved islanders passing foodstuffs from mouth to mouth (apparently it took a pandemic for ITV to realise this was unhygienic).

Yet in all the ways that matter the series remains the same. The action opens with all the single ladies (there are five) arriving at Love Island HQ in slow motion montages.

We are introduced to Paige, Indiyah, Tasha, Amber and Gemma. All are personable, though the star wattage is courtesy of Gemma. She’s an international dressage champion and daughter of soccer player Michael Owen, scorer of the best goal in a World Cup game in which England go on to lose on penalties (when she later reveals her second name is “Owen” she appears miffed no one has copped she has a famous dad).

First at the villa is Paige, who reveals she was once briefly engaged and says facial hair is “a requirement” (for prospective partners, not for Paige). Indiyah, meanwhile, describes herself as “cheerful, outgoing and adventurous” with a “random love life”. And then there is Tasha who was born deaf, which she says doesn’t define her but makes her unique (she is Love Island’s first deaf contestant).

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Next it’s the lads – who include chipper Dublin scientist Dami Hope. He’s introduced in a credit sequence in which he gazes through a microscope and sees a molecule flex into a heart shape.

Speaking of hearts and things you don’t want to see at the other end of a microscope, Dami quickly reveals he has a heart-shaped birthmark on a specific body part (it’s when you find yourself typing a sentence such as this late on a Bank Holiday Monday that you find yourself questioning your life choices). The rest are of the dudes are interchangeable though you will remember Liam, a “strength and conditioning” student from Wales, who reveals that for years he thought Elton John was a duo called “Elt and John”.

Laura Whitmore, the Bray-born presenter, returns as host. And then comes the first crunch moment as the couples pair off.

There’s a big innovation here in that the match-ups are decided by the public. That’s a break with Love Island sacred tradition, where the girls got to decide.

“For the first time ever, we asked the public to play Cupid, and pick the boy they thought you should couple up with,” says Whitmore. “This is Love Island – you never know what to expect.” (actually, Laura, I’m pretty sure we know what to expect– a crossover with Squid Game … now that would be something we didn’t expect).

Dami is first to arrive and so is paired by Amber. “Amber you had no control,” beings Whitmore, “are you happy?” “Yeah.. why not,” says Amber, not so much happy as quietly indifferent.

And then another twist – the arrival of Italian Davide, whom Gemma, despite being paired with Liam, is immediately swooning over. Just before final credits Davide receives a text: within 24 hours he is to pair up with one of the girls, meaning a bloke is to be shown the door early.

That’s a medium-scale bombshell. Otherwise Love Island chugs away on hormonal auto-pilot. Everyone is tanned and toned. Whitmore’s husband, Iain Stirling, is watching from a shack and sprinkling in sarcastic observations like a sort of weaponised version of Graham Norton on UK Eurovision.

The criticism of Love Island is that it is dumbed down to the point where the audience could be forgiven for fretting for the future of humankind. The truth, however, is that, rather than despair-inducing, Love Island is often simply just a snooze.

That’s certainly the case here. As the eight week season kicks off (no that isn’t a reference to your dad Gemma – please stop waiting for someone to guess his identity) eyelid drooping moments abound. In particular, the show grows becalmed whenever the islanders are required to sit around exchanging inane chatter – which happens a lot on launch night. Love can be maddening, euphoric, misery-inducing. But the harsh fact is that here the viewer is too often on a one way trip to Dull Island.