EYE TV
Virgin Island (Channel 4) The Bombing of Pan Am 103 The Eurovision Song Contest Match of the Day (all BBC1)
IN THE 98 years since John Logie Baird successfully transmitted a television signal between London and Glasgow, the industry in Britain has graduated from niche novelty through nightly addiction to a take-or-leave medium overshadowed by a feeling that the most interesting stuff is on other devices or streaming. Four simultaneous media controversies, though, remind us that veteran terrestrial networks can still cause a fuss.
Admittedly, Virgin Island seems deliberately to set out to poke the Ofcom bees’ nest with a stick. Take an already ethically questionable format – ITV’s Love Island – and make it even more so. Now, in place of a sun-kissed villa full of twentysomethings desperate to shag, we have a seaside hideaway full of young people who can’t imagine anything worse. A group of “sex and relationship coaches”, like Pontins Bluecoats of the gonads, haunt the dorm to engage the celibates in experimental hugging and touching: if it’s twerking, it’s working!