When it comes to the multitude of Reality TV Dating Shows that now overwhelm our TV schedules, it is very obvious that they are strictly for straights: think Love is Blind, Dating Naked, Love Island, Perfect Match, Love at First Sight etc etc need I go on?   Then two years ago, gay icon Kylie Minogue‘s younger sister  Dannii popped up on Brit TV  with I Kissed A Boy, the first British dating show to feature exclusively gay men. It was a big success with Critics too as Benjamin Lee  wrote in The Guardian “it’s a fun and grounding reminder that we all deserve a chance to graft around the pool while a Dua Lipa song plays in the background. Luv is luv. Very quickly followed by Minogue hosting I Kissed a Girl, a dating show for queer women. 

Now the UK’s august BBC TV has a new reality dating show, Stranded on Honeymoon Island which both confused and stretched the imagination of this writer who only continued researching it as it will have LGBTQ couples on…in this case a lesbian pair. 

The show starts with a group of singletons who embark on speed dating sessions, before a matchmaker pairs them up, and sends them to a remote island.  Once there, the couples get married before even knowing each other’s names, and then embark on a three week honeymoon together while stranded on an island. (Don’t even start how we gays were once accused of destroying the ‘sanctity of marriage” …)