Love Island review: An all filler, no killer experience

The ten minute “making of” segment at the end of every Attenborough documentary has quite rightly revolutionised natural history program making, and there is absolutely no reason why Love Island should not apply its techniques to Tommy Fury and the making of a small breakfast omelette.

It would, frankly, not have been enough, had we the viewer merely seen the omelette being presented to Molly-Mae. We deserve more. And we got more. There was thinking behind the omelette, the tactics, the execution of the omelette, not to mention a full omelette debrief on whether the omelette’s strategic purpose had been fulfilled. Not since Marcel Proust devoted 50 full pages to a miniature sponge cake dipped in tea can any food item in popular culture have been subjected to quite such exhaustive analysis.

Still, it has been a remarkable journey for Mr Fury. Twenty-four hours prior to the Saga of the Omelette, Tommy, aged 20, had never boiled a kettle before, and had to take instruction on the subject by one of his fellow housemates. To leap straight to omelette level within one single day of making your first ever cup of tea is extraordinary progress. Don’t be surprised if, this time tomorrow, he is rising in the dark before dawn to begin work on a wildly ambitious spun sugar project which will inevitably collapse, Bake Off: The Professionals style, on its way to Molly Mae’s judging table.

It did mean there was precious little time to squeeze any other storylines in around the omelette. And, frankly, as the bright dawn of Love Island series five descends to a Sisyphean hell dream in which nobody loves or even very much likes one another, is that such a surprise? It is already very much an all filler no killer experience.

There are, somewhat unfortunately, no moving parts. Love moves through Love Island with all the easy lubrication of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement through the House of Commons. Most of the women don’t fancy anybody, nor do they exhibit anything that might suggest that one day, perhaps, they will.

There can be no doubting that producers have significantly increased the overall intelligence quotient this year, but the unfortunate side effect is that most concerned have sussed out that the joke is on them and they’re not playing along.

The long winter could come to Love Island before Yewande, Anna or Amber feel obliged to have televised sexual intercourse in front of a night vision camera with an almost total stranger just because ITV2 wants them to. And who can blame them? But it does rather beg the question, why are they there?

But, who needs love, when you’ve got Tommy Fury, inadvertently peeling back the covers to his own interior monologue, where “hypnosis” and “diagnosis” mean the same thing, and there is an as yet unexplained determination to make “chive” a thing. I’ve been “chived”, you’ve been “chived”, he she or it has been “chived”. What chived is meant to mean we are yet to discover. One imagines, indeed one hopes, we never will.

Expect more of this tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that.