There is no shortage of dating reality shows, but this summer one is receiving the majority of the buzz. “Love Island USA,” an American spinoff of a popular British dating show, is dominating social media discourse, breaking streaming records and making fans out of even the most curmudgeonly anti-reality TV watchers.
The show, which streams on Peacock, gathers a group of contestants, called islanders, into a luxury villa (this season is in Fiji) and tasks them with coupling up, either out of true love, friendship or simple survival. Islanders who are single were kicked out of the villa, and every so often American viewers have been asked to vote out their least favorite couple. In Sunday night’s season finale, the pair voted “most compatible,” will win a cash prize of $100,000.
The show is captured through 80 to 90 cameras installed around the villa, which feed footage to a war room at the resort’s reception area. There, a crew of 450 producers, editors and postproduction executives make decisions about what footage will make the cut.
“What’s shot on a Monday is delivered to the network on a Tuesday, and it works that way every day for a six-week run,” Simon Thomas, an executive producer at ITV Entertainment, the production company for “Love Island,” said in an interview.
Though “Love Island USA” has been on air since 2019, this season — its sixth — has been by far the most successful. The first three seasons, which aired on CBS, received moderate viewership but did not live up to the success of the original British version. This season, the show has been the top reality series across all streaming platforms since its start on June 11, according to preliminary data from Nielsen. The show has also dominated social media, overshadowing Peacock’s other fan favorites like “The Traitors.”
What accounts for the sudden surge of success? According to fans and the people behind the show, this season’s massive success has been a combination of changing the host, embracing social media and improving the casting process.
At the top of list is the show’s new host, Ariana Madix, who is known for her starring role on Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules.”
Ms. Madix took over for the actress Sarah Hyland, who hosted the fourth and fifth seasons, and her devoted fan base — already primed to watch and enjoy reality television — followed her to the new gig. On “Love Island USA,” Ms. Madix has adopted something of a big sister role, openly rooting for each couple and appearing to be genuinely invested in their relationships.
“I started watching this season partly because Ariana had joined and I really enjoy her,” said Ira Madison, the TV writer and host of the pop culture podcast “Keep It.” “I tuned in and I was like, ‘Oh, wait.’”
Mr. Madison, who said he had begun posting about the show after seeing so many people on his feed use a “Love Island USA” hashtag, believes social media is also a major factor in this season’s success.
“I think that one of the biggest things that is still going for Twitter is that people who watch reality TV need places to talk about it,” he said. “And the show is doing really well on TikTok, where they’re publishing clips.”
That’s all part of Peacock’s strategy. The streaming service views social media not just as a marketing tool but as a necessary part of the postproduction process.
“We invest a lot of time and money into a team who are making content for social media,” Mr. Thomas said. “And then you pair it with the idea that we’ve always been this appointment TV for people who are too young to remember what appointment TV is. So you bring people together at nine o’clock, and you get that water cooler vibe.”
“TikTok has been huge,” said Sharon Vuong, executive vice president of alternative programming and development at NBCUniversal. “The audience is on TikTok, sharing things and taking advantage.”
“As social media grows, we grow along with it and we adjust our strategy, but it’s always been embedded in part of the process,” she added. “And it’s not separate from production. It’s part of production.”
Iain Stirling, the Scottish comedian who has provided the dry voice-over for “Love Island UK” since 2015 and is back for his third season with “Love Island USA,” believes another big factor in the success is this season’s exceptional casting.
“The most important thing with any reality show is casting,” he said. “And they’ve done an absolutely fantastic job with the cast, especially the girls. They’ve done a really good job of showing the girls’ flaws in a relatable way. The likability comes from watching a flawed character and being like, ‘Oh my god, that’s me.’”
Corie Henson, the executive vice president of unscripted content, competition and game shows at NBCUniversal, said that ordering two seasons ahead of time gave the producers the ability to be more methodical with casting — a luxury they did not have before.
“We actually got to meet all of them in person and make those decisions way out ahead of time,” she said. “And that’s the first time we’ve really gotten to sort of nurture the cast like this, where we haven’t been, you know, running to a new location, or casting over Zoom because of Covid. So, it was just like, everything really lined up.”
And for Mr. Stirling’s part, he believes the last element of success was pairing his dry, self-deprecating voice-overs with Ms. Madix’s big sister approach.
“What’s quite nice is me as the voice and Ariana are a lovely juxtaposition,” he said. “You’ve got me as the voice going, ‘Oh that’s a silly thing we’re all looking at’ and you’ve got Ariana being like, ‘I genuinely really care about these people.’ And I think that sort of encapsulates the two emotions you feel while watching Love Island.”
