What we’ve got here is failure to communicate
Love Island, Virgin Media One, all week
Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy CNN, Sunday
The Big Interview Virgin Media One, Thursday
The bad news is that it’s back – and the even more awful news is that it’s worse than ever. Every year, purely for this column, I watch the first week of Love Island, largely on the basis it’s one of the few original programmes on television in summers dominated by sports events and repeats. I watch the last week of it too, just to see who actually has won but, in between, there is the blessed relief of not having to listen to vapid conversations between fame-hungry wannabes who year in, year out seem to have a timeshare in the same single braincell.
Admittedly, Maura Higgins lit it up two years ago, and last year it fell blessed victim to the pandemic and didn’t run at all. Given the amount of time the producers had to cast this year’s marathon, it is unforgiveable that they have gone with usual identikit contestants, all plumped-up lips and big boobs on the women, and hair gel and perfect pecs on the lads.
The problem this time out is that none of them have very much to say for themselves. One nugget of wisdom was particularly striking: ‘All humans have eyes, noses and mouths, but we all look different,’ one of the women remarked, to which you only could utter aloud, ‘10 out of 10, Sherlock’.
There’s one lad in there, a Geordie called Brad, who literally talks only about himself and his weekend ritual of meeting his friends for coffee before playing football. He has no curiosity about anyone else, leaving fellow contestant Chloe fuming. At least I think she was, but can’t confirm that 100%, because she has such a languid way of talking, seeming to reach to her pancreas to extract every jaded syllable, it often is hard to tell.
Brad was ‘coupled’ with Faye, but they soon hated each other. After a game of beer pong, Brad’s dare was to kiss the islander he most fancied, and then the one he fancied the least. Resisting what I suspect was the strong urge just to kiss himself, he settled on another of the islanders before kissing Faye as the woman he least fancied.
In what has been the only entertaining exchange of the series to date, she took him aside and tore strips off him, calling him that most taboo of swear words and leaving him looking like limp lettuce. On Thursday night, two new lads arrived, one of whom is called Chuggs. I assumed it was because he could chug beer at an enviable rate, but no – it was a nickname given to him in childhood because he likes cuddles and hugs. Let’s just say it was a bad night to have a late dinner, because it nearly came back up.
Love Island’s only saving grace is that it brings sunshine into my living room each night. That’s an appalling thing to be grateful for in mid-summer but, hey, that’s Ireland for you. From now until the bitter end, though, here’s one viewer they’ll be doing without. I know I’m not the demographic, but even those who are seem disenchanted. I WhatsApped my niece during one episode because she’s usually addicted to the show, and I got a short reply: ‘I’m not really paying attention – I think I’m growing up!’ I will receive no better message this year.
For proper adult entertainment, you need look no further than Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy on CNN. Actor and bon vivant Tucci is one of my heroes, more sophisticated and urbane than any man has a right to be – his cocktail masterclasses were one of the highlights of the first lockdown.
In this lovingly shot and assembled series, he’s travelling around Italy to discover its regional cuisines, and this week he was in
Rome, where the food of the working classes, the likes of carbonara, are very familiar to us here too. I was delighted to see the look of sheer disgust on the faces of the Italian chefs when Tucci told them restaurants in the States serve carbonara made with fresh cream, when egg yolk is the real ingredient that gives it that lustrous sheen.
Despite eating everything in front of him, Tucci is rake thin, which is a little disappointing for the more portly among us, but his passion for food is unmistakeable. For history, too, as he toured what one was the main abattoir for Rome, and a suburb of the city called Centocelle, which means 100 jails.
An extension of the city’s metro has made it hip and trendy, where once it was edgy and rough, and that doesn’t seem to have pleased everyone. Three restaurants were firebombed there, one of them twice, and no one has been apprehended so the motive is unclear, though the suspicion is that it might be locals opposed to gentrification.
Like Tucci, I was disgusted by this. Forget about noses, eyes and mouths – food is what unites all of us, and an attack on a restaurant, especially in Italy, is an attack on life itself.
Finally, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald was the subject of The Big Interview, and made the valid point that when a woman politician is vocal, she often is dubbed shrill or sarcastic, when men in public life simply are seen as assertive or witty.
In an unusual misstep, interviewer Colette Fitzpatrick then asked Ms McDonald when was the last time she cried, which rather played into the same narrative. I’m fairly certain I’ve never heard that question asked of a man in politics, or asked of men in general in interviews.
For the record, though, and just to even things up, I last cried on Friday night. I had to watch another episode of Love Island.