In 1965, the first televised dating game show aired in America. In The Dating Game, an unmarried man or woman sits behind a screen asking three suitors questions. The various suitors can be seen by the audience, but not the single man or woman, and each suitor has to try and one-up their competitors with their answers to win the man or woman’s affections.
Fifty years later, across the pond, the dating game show had evolved through many forms into ITV2’s Love Island. The reality dating show involves a group of young and attractive twenty-somethings being introduced in a Spanish villa where they must “couple up”. Over two months, different couples date, split up, fall for one another, let their eyes wander, recouple and are voted off the show. In the final, a select group of couples face a public vote to win £50,000. Every summer Love Island dominates popular culture discourse (and probably dinner table conversation too, if you have teenagers in the house).
