The ex factor: why reality TV is obsessed with dating old flames

From an Amazon dating show where old crushes appear out of a pseudo-time portal to Jacques on Love Island’s ‘sex flashbacks’ to his former girlfriend, lost loves make for irresistible TV

The ex factor: why reality TV is obsessed with dating old flames

As the sun sets on this series of Love Island, our summer has again been dominated by swimwear-clad singletons forming new connections. For weeks, we’ve seen a conveyor belt of Islanders couple up, break up and, in some cases, make up. But since the longest relationships on the show have existed for only a few weeks, it’s sometimes hard not to think of them as very intense holiday flings.

There are no concerns regarding the authenticity of feelings in the new Amazon Prime series The One That Got Away, though. Hosted by the Australian-American singer Betty Who, it features six singles revisiting lost loves from a wide pool: past dates, crushes that were never taken to the next step, potential partners who “friend-zoned” and many instances of “right person, wrong time”. Daters are instructed to go to a “portal” (since Love Is Blind, a strange sci-fi element has become customary) and out of it emerges a potential suitor from their dating history. As if the portal were a time machine, contestants are given the chance to finally stop that ship from passing in the night.

As dating shows go from strength to strength, so do those about relationships that have ended. The past few years has seen a jump in reality series featuring couples oversharing and rehashing the issues that tore them apart, with all the gritty, inbetweeny bits of love that come with them. We started seeing programmes about past partners at the start of the millennium, thanks to the silly US show Ex-treme Dating, in which contestants went on dates and were fed advice from former partners through an earpiece with the aim of winning money. In the 2000s, First Love, Second Chance aired, giving old flames the chance to decide on whether to make a go of a relationship after spending a week exploring each other’s world.

But it was Ex on the Beach, which launched in 2014, that led the genre’s renaissance. Eight singles are sent to enjoy a holiday in the sunshine, then their exes emerge from the sea like sexy krakens. Over the years, the programme has become its own multiverse, with various spin-offs and versions in 15 countries. It has effectively kept most of the Geordie Shore and Towie casts employed for the best part of a decade.

Danielle and Ibrahim on Eating With My Ex. Photograph: Screengrab/BBC/Thames TV/EWME/Dan Russell

Then there is 2017’s celeb-packed Eating With My Ex, which is now in its fourth season of reuniting former couples over a three-course meal – and the dramatic confrontations, revelations and (sometimes) heartwarming reunions that come with it. Celebrity Ex in the City, part of the Ex on the Beach brand, is a similar format – a group of 12 celebrities debate getting back with their exes over dinner – while Channel 5’s One Night With My Ex unites former couples for 24 hours.

So why is reality TV obsessed with the ex? With all these shows, the backstory and the stakes are built in. Often, you’ll find yourself rooting for even the most ill-fated couplings, although sometimes it’s not clear if the participants are in it to reconcile or to get their revenge.

Love Island’s producers know this and regularly deploy exes, with Gemma Owen’s ex-boyfriend Jacques O’Neill being brought into the villa this year to shake up the group’s dynamics. As well as the drama surrounding their new partners, their past relationship continued to create tension (such as when Gemma referred to her new partner, Luca, by her ex’s name, or when Jacques had his heart rate raised by Gemma’s striptease during the infamous “heart rate challenge” – leading to him being pressed by his new partner, Paige, and confessing that it was due to having “sex flashbacks”).

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Drama aside, though, some of the most enjoyable scenes occur when two people find their way back to each other. In the Australian reality show Back With the Ex, one pair hadn’t seen each other for 28 years. After having kids (now grown up) and porcing their partners, Peter and Diane reconnected on the show; watching their relationship pick up where they left off gave the same giddy thrill as reading a second-chance romance novel. Its magic lay in something that viewers of reality TV dating shows are always hungry for, but increasingly miss out on: realness. At a time when going on reality TV to forge fake connections and front “showmances” is common, the raw emotions on these programmes is a welcome breath of fresh air.