Review: Is the documentary The Curse of Love Island worth watching?

THIS WEEK, THE 13th season of Love Island UK came to a close. At the same time, a documentary has been airing on Prime Video that aims to examine some of the dark sides of this beloved reality TV show.

But does The Curse of Love Island shed enough fresh light on the controversies that have dogged the series for years?

Simple but juicy format

When ITV first began airing Love Island in the early 2000s, it was for celebrities only. That version of the series lasted for two years. When it was rebooted in 2015, the draw was that it starred normal people. Well, extremely attractive, tanned young people who spend a lot of time in the gym, but normal people nonetheless.

Love Island has always had a pretty simplistic format: contestants are sent to an island in Mallorca (or South Africa if it’s for the winter seasons) where they couple up with each other. Couples can be voted out by the public each week, until one final couple wins the game and shares £50,000.

The juicy bits of Love Island come from the dynamics between the islanders, which are captured in Big Brother-style constant filming. There is always going to be tension when strangers have to couple up with each other, and when hot new contestants are sent in as ‘bombshells’ to shake things up. Every season of Love Island promises twists, minor scandals, and characters that are very fun or very vexing to watch. In many ways, it’s perfect reality TV.

Since its early days, reality TV has always received a lot of public attention. And why not? Viewers love watching real people interact, especially when there’s potential for drama. Back in the innocent, early-2000s days of Big Brother, the contestants became household names in the UK and Ireland. This set the trend for reality TV meaning instant notoriety. But it also meant the justifiable fear that someone might be branded a ‘baddie’ and emerge from a reality show in a negative light.

With Love Island, the islanders leave knowing that they will exit the villa into a world that has a lot of opinions about them. Love Island V2.0 began just as the new iteration of social media – Twitter, Instagram – was garnering serious cultural power. So this has meant that when islanders finish their time on the show, they not only are thrust into the world of the tabloid media, but their every move has already been pored over by strangers on the internet. And these strangers have opinions. 

On the one hand, this newfound celebrity status can be utilised by contestants – like Maura Higgins and Molly-Mae Hague – to make money and have a good time. But it isn’t easy to be a former islander. As The Curse of Love Island shows, contestants can face horrendous trolling online.

In addition, when new seasons are aired, contestants from older series might be forgotten about. This can create issues when their value is connected to the show, particularly as the typical route for former islanders is to become a content creator. Negotiating that tricky position between praise and criticism is far from easy for contestants, and trolling can make people feel targeted.

Uneasy ground

The Curse of Love Island looks at all of this and how it impacted on three people connected with Love Island: contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thassalitis, and former presenter Caroline Flack.

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This is not easy ground, because all three people took their own lives: Gradon in 2018, Thassalitis in 2019, and Flack in 2020. When it comes to reporting on people who died by suicide, the media is wisely encouraged not to pinpoint one particular factor that led to their actions. The documentary does indicate that taking part in the reality show put the contestants under very specific pressures, which were potentially exacerbated by other factors in their personal life. Flack was also under tremendous pressure in her own life, facing a court case that was being played out in the media.

The documentary doesn’t try to suggest that the show is the reason behind their tragic deaths. But it does ask if the contestants got enough psychological care following their time on the show. Reality TV has tended to have a ‘we’ll deal with it later’ approach to how people might feel about suddenly being thrust into the limelight.  

ITV itself told the documentary makers that its duty of care procedures have “evolved significantly over time”, and that it has “added elements such as language and behaviour training for participants” as well as a social media blackout while they’re on the show. It also maintains “proactive contact” with islanders for 14 months after the series has ended. 

This new level of care was introduced after Gradon and Thassalitis’ deaths, because their suicides were a shocking moment for the show and its viewers.

But while the commentators on The Curse of Love Island point to the series’ downsides, it’s clear that it still hoovers up visitors. This element isn’t really discussed in the programme, and it would have been great to see a further discussion around how the show maintains its popularity despite the tragedies.

A bit of an insight is given into that cognitive dissonance by participant Anton Danyluk. He tells the documentary that though he took part after Gradon and Thassalitis’ deaths, he didn’t think much at the time about the link between them and the show.

He had a great time participating, but later on struggled with his mental health. Danyluk had more positive experiences on the show overall than Malin Andersson, who was in season 2 and maintains that “nothing is real” about the interactions viewers see on Love Island.

It would have been great to see more teasing out of this statement, and about the level of performance expected of participants. There are so many questions asked by this documentary that are pertinent, but left somewhat hanging in the air. 

Not all questions answered

It’s perhaps an impossible task for The Curse of Love Island to really answer all the questions set out by its existence. Across two 50-minute episodes, a range of talking heads (including Irish pop-culture commentator Orlaith Condon, who created the hit Love Island podcast My Pod On Paper) provide some very insightful and cogent commentary. They discuss the downsides of Love Island, the impact of instant fame, and social media’s nasty commentary.

But it feels as though we will have to wait years, until long after Love Island has ceased airing, before we get the real story of what went on. It will take people involved in the production of the show to speak out before we learn more about the challenges and how the aftercare evolved as it did.

The Curse of Love Island is worth watching if you’re not up to speed with the concerns around the show. There is frank honesty from former islanders like Andersson and Danyluk, as well as Luis Morrison and Marcel Somerville, about how the show impacted them, and their experiences certainly tell a cautionary tale. The talking heads all clearly understand the world of reality TV and its downsides. But overall, The Curse of Love Island is really only scratching the surface of a story that goes very deep. 

Anyone looking for a forensic examination of reality TV, the way the media treats reality contestants, whether broadcasters truly live up to their duty of care for contestants, and how we ended up in a situation where people can be very badly impacted by their time on a reality show, will be left disappointed. But the questions the documentary raises are pertinent indeed.

The Curse of Love Island is streaming on Prime Video now.

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