People always mention Crossroads, Triangle or Big Brother, when it comes to mentioning the worst television show of all time, but surely ( Celebrity) Love Island must rank as the most banal, pointless and worthless piece of television of the last 50 years.
The premise was this: 12 Z list celebrities, OK Abi Titmuss and Paul Danan are quite well known,but the others were total obscurities, get sent to Fiji on a very well paid freebie for five weeks in the hope they would pull each other. Usually they ended up drinking, swearing and whinging most of the time and when something was likely to happen, when a couple were sent to the Loveshack to copulate, the cameras panned away. I endured two days of this nonsense before, like millions of others, switching over ( Abi Titmuss later revealed she needed the money and the show was pants). Also as ITV were bitter that a previous reality show, Survivor, which wasn't bad actually, had been killed off by Big Brother, they were determined to get their revenge and ran Love Island opposite Big Brother on some nights.
After Celebrity Love Island failed to set the ratings alight and Big Brother reigned supreme, ITV then had the wheeze of removing the word celebrity from the title for the second series. However, no one was fooled and this monstrosity limped on through the summer of 2006 stinking out ITV1's schedules every night and actually being worse than the first series( I caught two minutes of Love Island one night and saw some Z lister hurling abuse at another Z lister and prayed a bomb would fall on the set). ITV became embarrassed at having such a costly flop on their hands and finally when this hopeless show's credits ran for the final time, announced it would not be returning. The only person I knew who was upset by Love Island's mercy killing was a 25 year old who bought HEAT magazine, which summed up the whole show, a Z list pantomime aimed at women in their twenties who bought certain magazines.
However, at least Crossroads had its heroic OTT acting, wonky sets and daft plots to its credit and has a cult following, but Love Island had nothing at all to recommend it and certainly had no so bad it's good factor like Crossroads.Perhaps it will serve as a testament as to how awful ITV1 became in the mid noughties and how vapid the whole Z list celeb culture of the noughties was.
Unbelievably, ITV, whose reputation for making trash television is well deserved, are reviving this mind rot this summer, though without celebrities. However, it is being shown on ITV 2 as memories of Love Island's last outing are too bad for it to be on ITV 1.
The premise was this: 12 Z list celebrities, OK Abi Titmuss and Paul Danan are quite well known,but the others were total obscurities, get sent to Fiji on a very well paid freebie for five weeks in the hope they would pull each other. Usually they ended up drinking, swearing and whinging most of the time and when something was likely to happen, when a couple were sent to the Loveshack to copulate, the cameras panned away. I endured two days of this nonsense before, like millions of others, switching over ( Abi Titmuss later revealed she needed the money and the show was pants). Also as ITV were bitter that a previous reality show, Survivor, which wasn't bad actually, had been killed off by Big Brother, they were determined to get their revenge and ran Love Island opposite Big Brother on some nights.
After Celebrity Love Island failed to set the ratings alight and Big Brother reigned supreme, ITV then had the wheeze of removing the word celebrity from the title for the second series. However, no one was fooled and this monstrosity limped on through the summer of 2006 stinking out ITV1's schedules every night and actually being worse than the first series( I caught two minutes of Love Island one night and saw some Z lister hurling abuse at another Z lister and prayed a bomb would fall on the set). ITV became embarrassed at having such a costly flop on their hands and finally when this hopeless show's credits ran for the final time, announced it would not be returning. The only person I knew who was upset by Love Island's mercy killing was a 25 year old who bought HEAT magazine, which summed up the whole show, a Z list pantomime aimed at women in their twenties who bought certain magazines.
However, at least Crossroads had its heroic OTT acting, wonky sets and daft plots to its credit and has a cult following, but Love Island had nothing at all to recommend it and certainly had no so bad it's good factor like Crossroads.Perhaps it will serve as a testament as to how awful ITV1 became in the mid noughties and how vapid the whole Z list celeb culture of the noughties was.
Unbelievably, ITV, whose reputation for making trash television is well deserved, are reviving this mind rot this summer, though without celebrities. However, it is being shown on ITV 2 as memories of Love Island's last outing are too bad for it to be on ITV 1.