When the writer and director arrived in Wales to shoot a new drama, she was nursing a broken heart and romantic ideas of British life. Then she discovered the reality soap opera...
As I planned my summer in Wales, my head filled with visions of romance, I supposed I’d do what the heroines of novels did when they crossed the pond for a new life: go to the shore to take the healing air. Meet a man and move into his stunning manor, possibly watched over by a sinister housemaid. Scurry through cobblestoned streets and into dusty bookshops, furtively pulling up the hood of my cloak. Go to a banquet and dance to piano music in a great hall. Taste gamey meats on a date with a count, then become a countess. Shoot a bow and arrow. Develop a slight accent. Images of everything from Brighton Rock to Emma, The Woman In White to Notting Hill, filled my head. There was even a little 24 Hour Party People in there. But as it would happen, my days were long, and much more Wernham Hogg than Wuthering Heights. And my nights were short because soon I was smacked with a 9pm curfew. No, I haven’t been convicted of a crime and placed under house arrest. I discovered Love Island.
Love Island, the cultural touchstone that takes over summers in the United Kingdom. I had previously only heard of this hot-weather reality soap opera from my shameful Mail Online habit (the best place to see what Victoria Beckham is wearing as she ignores the Spice Girls’ sapphic drama) but I was totally unprepared for how wholly it would take over my life and days. It seemed like a small investment, a calming way to power down as I ate my spaghetti; but as I was introduced to the villa and its anarchic customs, my vague interest turned to something like obsession. If my colleague and roommate Liz tried to turn down the volume to take a call, I turned savage: “What the hell are you doing?” I was busy listening to every murmur, the particularities of these regional accents, the smack of lips under duvet covers. The pop music may blare, but this is nothing if not a show of quiet human moments, where the real drama is in what they don’t say as they wash their bronzer off for bed and change into their night-time thongs.
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