With everyone unable to leave the house to meet up with their latest dating app match, the only option is to live vicariously through others or brave a first date over FaceTime.
Here are some of the best dating shows to keep you company while social distancing.
The social dating experiment, Love Is Blind, was a Netflix sensation and has already been renewed for two more series following its success.
Close the curtains, turn up the heating and settle on the sofa. Love Island is back with its first-ever winter edition, along with a new location and a new host.
If you haven’t got your fix from the daily episode, the Love Island: The Morning After podcast returns for a third series as the much-needed pick-me-up after the drama of the night before.
With a brand-new villa and Laura Whitmore taking over from Caroline Flack as the host, the most addictive reality show on TV is heading back to our screens.
From wealthy property heirs to troublesome twins, the new series is sure to provide the essential juicy drama needed to brighten up dreary January.
Here are the 12 new contestants hoping to find love in the villa.
Replacing Caroline Flack, the Irish presenter will be heading over to a brand new villa in Cape Town, South Africa, for the show’s first ever winter series.
Once again, a batch of new Islanders will try to charm their fellow singletons and woo the public as they attempt to find love.
Whitmore will also host Love Island: Aftersun, where former Islanders discuss their time in the villa. The series will air on ITV2 live from London on Monday nights at 10pm.
This year’s singletons ready to play the dating game includes Love Island star Amy Hart, who recently had her heart broken by fellow Love Island star Curtis Pritchard before dramatically leaving the villa in response to the breakup, former The Only Way Is Essex star Amy Childs, who after a recent split is hoping this will be her chance to meet Mr Right, and Made in Chelsea’s Olivia Bentley, who will be ditching the Chelsea dating scene in the hopes of finding a connection.
After a summer in the Love Island villa, the pair found love with Molly-Mae Hague and Maura Higgins and also started their unlikely bromance.
The new series will see Fury and Pritchard swap jobs and tackle the challenges of stepping into each other’s shoes.
Professional boxer Fury will hang up his boxing gloves and put on his dancing shoes to train with a professional dancer and get ready for a ballroom competition.
Video-sharing platform TikTok was the word on everyone’s lips leaving the second session, “Exploring Gen Z”. Many had not heard of the Chinese-owned social media sensation, but were keen to find out more in order to reach the elusive next generation of viewers. Many market researchers describe Generation Z as those born after 1997.
Defined by session chair Rob Chapman as the generation “for whom 9/11 wasn’t a coming of age event”, Gen Z were instead shaped by the recession of the last decade.
The Surjury (w/t) follows a jury of 12 members from the public as they decide if people should go under the knife for the cosmetic surgery of their dreams.
The series will allow candidates to receive measured advice about the cosmetic procedures they desire and give them the freedom to explore their choices with more information.
Introduced by Flack, the candidates will need to gain a majority of the jury vote to secure the procedure they’ve requested.
If the surgery goes ahead, candidates are then invited back to demonstrate the results of their operation.
OK, in the spirit of apologetic full disclosure, this ain’t a normal week for me. It’s August. Piers and Susanna are off (deservedly – thought I’d better slip that in) on their French car factory-style summer sojourn. I’m also sneaking in a bit of R&R and extra-curricular that the normal 100-hour week doesn’t allow.
At Latitude, the hybrid Glasto crossed with church fête Suffolk festival, where, among the middle aged of the mojito-fuelled mosh pit, I bump (literally) into my ex-ITV boss Peter Fincham for our annual blokey embrace.
In the last couple of years, former contestants have found fame and fortune outside the villa, even if they didn’t find true love.
Here is a roundup of what happened next for some of the islanders from 2017 and 2018.
