One hour I’d like to forget
Bearing in mind the current dating show climate, Channel 4 perhaps overcomplicated things with its latest effort last night.
placed a young couple in a state of hypnotic amnesia to see whether they could be persuaded to ditch each other and cop off with someone else.
Hypnotism seemed a bit extravagant when you consider Love Island conducts a similar experiment simply by dangling the threat of eviction and/or a £50,000 prize in front of its contestants.
To be fair, Hello Stranger couple Lucy, 22, and George, 24, left, had been together a bit longer than your average Love Island duo – though I get the impression that doesn’t matter very much to the young crowd. Either way, Hello Stranger’s premise felt no less superficial than its ITV2 rival’s. To be honest, I spent most of the hour wondering whether this show was actually a spoof.
I mean, if it really was possible for a hypnotist to make you forget your partner existed, surely Aaron Calvert would have queues around the block.
Plus, it was hardly a surprise that having gone on dates with people NOTHING LIKE their actual partners, Lucy and George chose each other.
Not that I am dismissing hypnotic amnesia out of hand. In fact, if Aaron can fit me in, there is now an hour of TV I’d really like to forget. LOVE Island got off to a sizzling start with nearly three million viewers – giving ITV2 its biggest ratings of all time.
Figures for the launch show, which peaked at 3.4 million, also made it the most-watched programme in the time-slot.
It beat BBC1’S Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley, raunchy BBC2 drama Versailles, as well as ITV’S The Queen’s Coronation in Colour.
The audience was more than double the 1.3 million who tuned in for the launch episode of the reality dating show last year.
ITV2’S previous ratings high came with the finale of last year’s Love Island, with an audience of 2.6 million.
Last night, two new “bombshells” were added to the mix – 20-year-old student Georgia Steel, from York, and 26-yearold solicitor Rosie Williams, from South Wales.
Georgia says: “Physically, I’d say my bottom is my best asset.” And Rosie reckons: “I’m quite unpredictable, you never quite know what I’m going to do next.”