That’s the setup now. Sofa in the Hackney flat, oversized grey hoodie that has seen better days, bare feet tucked under me on the rug, cherry vape going like a chimney. Oat-milk flat white on the coffee table, already half cold because I keep forgetting it exists. Blue nails tapping the page while the telly pumps out another episode of manufactured heartbreak. I told myself I was done with this show last summer. Properly done. Swore it on the group chat, even. And yet here I am again, highlighter in one hand, phone in the other, documenting the latest instalment of what I can only describe as patriarchal performance art dressed up as holiday telly.
It starts innocent enough. A bunch of fit people in a villa in Spain or wherever they’ve parked them this year, sun cream and tiny bikinis, the usual. Then the producers get to work. You can almost hear the brief in the edit suite: make the girls compete, keep the boys looking like prizes, stir just enough jealousy to guarantee a recoupling that feels like a public execution. I pause it every ten minutes. Not because I’m bored. Because I need to write down the exact wording before it disappears into the next montage of sunset kisses and slow-motion hair flicks.
Last Tuesday it was the recoupling. One of the girls, let’s call her the one with the Essex vowels because of course she has them, had spent three days actually talking to a lad who seemed halfway decent. Not “my type on paper” decent, just a bloke who asked her questions and waited for the answers. Then a bombshell walks in, all legs and timing, and suddenly the decent one is looking elsewhere like his brain has been remotely rewired. The original girl sits there with her face doing that thing where she’s trying not to cry on national television. The other girls start the huddle. You know the one. The “we need to talk about this” huddle that the cameras love because it looks like sisterhood until you realise half of them are already calculating how this drama helps their own coupling.
I shouted at the screen. Proper shouted. “She’s not bitter, you melts, she’s just clocked that she’s being swapped like a limited edition trainer.” Then I wrote it down, word for word, because that line is going in the thread later. The notebook is full of these now. Little observations that start as rage and end up as data. How many times a boy says “I need to explore my options” when what he means is “the public might vote for the new girl and I fancy staying in the villa.” How often a girl gets labelled “too much” for having an opinion that lasts longer than a single sentence. How the edit will cut a five-minute conversation down to three seconds of side-eye so the audience can fill in the rest with their own assumptions.
The live-tweeting is where it gets properly chaotic. I start calm. First tweet is usually something dry, like “another recoupling, another masterclass in how to make women police each other so the men don’t have to do any emotional labour.” Then the replies roll in. Some of them are gold. Women clocking the same patterns I am, sending voice notes that are just screaming. The Coven group chat lights up like a Christmas tree. One of them will drop a screenshot of a producer credit from three series ago and we’ll all pretend we’ve just uncovered Watergate. Others are less helpful. The “not all the boys are like that” brigade. The ones who think pointing out the obvious is the same as hating fun. I used to argue with them. Now I just quote-tweet with a single word: “Noted.” Then I go back to the notebook.
There’s a particular flavour of comment that winds me up more than the rest. The ones that say the girls should just “play the game better.” As if the game wasn’t designed with only one winning strategy for women: be desirable but not demanding, funny but not loud, loyal but ready to move on the second the public vote shifts. I grew up watching the same dynamic in the playground in Basildon. Girls getting called names for having a backbone, boys getting called legends for having none. The villa is just that playground with better lighting and a drinks budget.
I pause again. Light the vape. The cloud hangs there while I try to remember why I keep doing this to myself. Part of it is the journalism habit. I can’t watch anything without taking notes anymore. Part of it is the same reason I still watch TOWIE even though I know exactly how the argument is going to go before anyone opens their mouth. It’s research. It’s also a kind of self-harm I haven’t found a healthier replacement for yet. You tell yourself you’re watching critically, that the notebook makes it academic, that the thread afterwards is the real work. Then you catch yourself leaning forward when two girls start properly going for each other and you realise your pulse is up. That’s the bit that makes me feel like a hypocrite. I can write a thousand words on internalised misogyny and still feel a little thrill when the row kicks off. The show knows this. The producers have known it for years. They feed us the conflict because we keep coming back for it, critique or no critique.
Mum watches it too, on the weekends I go home for roast. She sits in her chair with a cup of tea and a completely different commentary. “That one’s got a lovely figure, though.” “He seems nice, the quiet one.” She doesn’t see the machinery. Or she sees it and decides it doesn’t matter because it’s only telly. I try to explain the editing sometimes and she just laughs and tells me I think too much. She’s probably right. I do think too much. It’s the job. It’s also the personality. Permanently outraged but still dead friendly, that’s the brand. Even when the outrage is aimed at a programme I refuse to stop watching.
The public vote is the part that feels most like a crime scene. Viewers at home deciding who stays and who goes based on three-minute clips that have been sliced and diced to create maximum chaos. A girl can spend a week being thoughtful and funny and still get sent packing because one conversation was edited to look like she was stirring. The boys rarely cop the same heat. Their “banter” gets framed as personality. Their indecision gets framed as being torn. I wrote a whole page on that last week. Then I posted the thread and it did the rounds for about six hours before the algorithm moved on to whatever the next villa disaster was. That’s the other thing about this job. You can spend an evening documenting the patriarchy in real time and by morning it’s already last week’s news.
I used to think the solution was to stop watching. Just switch off, read a book, go to bed at a reasonable hour like a functional adult. I tried it for two episodes. Lasted until the preview for the next one popped up and I felt that familiar itch. The same itch I get when a story is breaking and I know I should leave it but I can’t. So I switched it back on. Notebook ready. Vape ready. The whole sad little ritual.
There’s a moment every episode, usually around the forty-minute mark, where I have to stand up and walk around the flat. Bare feet on the floorboards, hoodie sleeves pulled over my hands, talking to myself like a nutter. “They’re doing it again. They’re actually doing it again.” Then I sit back down because the alternative is missing the next bit and having to catch up on Twitter, which is somehow worse. The comments section by that point is already a war zone. People defending the undefendable. People attacking the girls for not being “grateful.” People insisting it’s just a bit of fun and why can’t I take a joke. I take plenty of jokes. I just prefer them when they’re not built on the same tired script we’ve been running since the first series.
What gets me most is how predictable it all is and how we still fall for it. The villa could be in a different country, the contestants could have different names, the year could be 2026 or 2016, and the beats would still land in the same places. Girl likes boy. Boy likes new girl. Original girl gets painted as the problem. Audience picks sides. Recoupling. Tears. Repeat. I know the formula better than some of the producers at this point. That should be enough to make me switch off. Instead it makes me lean in closer, pen moving faster, because if I can see the strings then maybe other people can too. Or maybe I’m just another viewer who likes to pretend the notebook changes the nature of the transaction.
The episode ends. The credits roll. I sit there for a minute in the quiet, vape still going, coffee now completely undrinkable. Then I type up the thread. Short sentences. Punchy. The kind that get shared before breakfast. I add the usual disclaimer that yes I know it’s only telly, no I don’t think the contestants are uniquely terrible, yes the system is the problem. Post it. Watch the likes start ticking up. Feel that little hit of being right in public. Then close the laptop and stare at the ceiling for a bit.
Tomorrow there will be another episode. There always is. I’ll tell myself I’m only putting it on for background while I do something useful. I won’t. I’ll be on the sofa again, same hoodie, same notebook, same blue nails flying across the page. Because someone has to keep the receipts. And because, if I’m being completely honest with myself, part of me still wants to see how the next row plays out. Even when I already know exactly how it ends.
That’s the crime scene. Not just the villa. The fact that I keep returning to it with a highlighter and a half-finished coffee, calling it research while the show gets exactly what it wants from me. Attention. Outrage. Another night I could have spent doing literally anything else. I’ll be back tomorrow anyway. Notebook open. Ready to document the next one. Some habits are harder to break than others. This one still feels like work. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.