LOVE ISLAND IS taking most if not all of our time up right now because love it or hate it, you can’t really get away from it. Either way you’re going to be reading about it so you might as well succumb or at least not give out about people watching it.
Why are people who don’t watch Love Island so obsessed with the fact they don’t watch Love Island
— Lauren (@_laaauren_) June 10, 2018
Since it’s started again, it’s got us thinking about what an Irish version of the show would look like. Here’s what we came up with.
Name
Naturally we’d have to incorporate Irish into the title somewhere because that’s the best way we can show appreciation to a beautiful language that half of us hate. Something like ‘Grá Island’ or ‘Oileán Grá’ could definitely work. If we wanted to stick to English we could call it ‘Isle of Shifting’, ‘Whose Riding Who?’ or ‘The Coppers Experience’. All are very, very accurate.
Setting
Ireland itself is an island in case anyone forgot but this is probably too broad a concept for a TV show. Instead we could pick from a number of wonderful islands such as the Aran Islands, Achill Island, Lambay Island or even the Skelligs because of course the natural next step from Star Wars is of course Love Island.
Imagine 10 singletons arriving on tiny Inis Oírr where they have to stay for 8 weeks to try and find love and also somehow learn Irish. We could call it ‘The Ultimate Gaeltacht Experience’ because let’s face it, that’s exactly what it would turn into. All bad shifting and losing your fridginity.
Alternatively we could stick them on the Skelligs and just hope and pray they don’t damage it. If they go at the right time of year and don’t find love, they could at least make friends with the puffins right?
Contestants
As this is ‘Grá Island’ one would assume that every single stereotype would have to be put into the show. So we have your South Dublin lad called Oísín and your South Dublin girl named Saoirse who naturally will just knock off with each other for fear of having to branch outside Dublin.
There’ll have to be someone from Donegal because of the accent as well as a GAA obsessed boy and girl from preferable somewhere in the Midlands. We’d want names like Micháel, Enda, Eimear and Aoife here.
You’d also want at least two people who can speak Irish so they can bitch and nobody can understand it which will lead to a good bit of drama hopefully.
Finally we’d want someone from the North and Cork so they can have a row over which is the best area to be from because they’ll run out of things to talk about by the end of week 2. Can’t beat a good 32 counties debate can you? The name Gerry is totally acceptable here.
Challenges
Challenges are a key component of any Love Island but they need to designed around skills that Irish people possess. A good idea to base this off would be events from the Community Games such as the poc fada, a sack race or a who can fling the welly the furthest. Winner gets their pick of people.
Alternatively everyone enters the Texaco Art Competition and whoever comes the closest to first also gets their pick of people. They could also be a judging panel of shifting and whoever shifts the most like a washing machine is immediately kicked off the island. This could also work as a who can come up with the best lie for how they lost their fridginity. Worst lie has to sling their hook.
Host
We have a number of good candidates here. The obvious pick would be Vogue Williams but if we really wanted to spice it up, we could give it to Louis Walsh since he’s now left the X Factor. Another good shout might be Kathryn Thomas or Keith Duffy.
For the inevitable podcast you want a mix of people. You’d want someone who knows the show really well to explain it to someone who has never watched it. A good combination here could be Aisling Bea and Blindboy or Alison Spittle and Danny Healy Rae. The possibilities are endless.
