'Olivia Attwood’s Bad Boyfriends is up there with the worst TV of the year'

Barely a month ago, I claimed Dating Naked UK was one of the grubbiest TV shows of all time and suggested Rylan needed to get a new agent. Well, I think I may owe the big man a small apology.

Because after witnessing the arrival of ITV2’s latest reality show, Olivia Attwood’s Bad Boyfriends, I now suspect Rylan was merely taking an early lead in what is clearly the television industry’s latest race to the bottom. Either that or the two hosts, who are showbiz pals in real life, must have had a side bet on who could make the worst programme of the year.

If it was the latter, Rylan may as well pay up now. One episode was enough to convince me that former Love Islander Olivia Atwood has scooped the prize. How this will affect her burgeoning reputation as a half-decent TV presenter remains to be seen. All I can confirm right now is that in what is admittedly a pretty crowded field, Bad Boyfriends is by far the most exploitative TV format I’ve seen in a while.

It would appear ITV2 is celebrating the fact that it has tricked eight guys into taking part in a relationship-based programme which, from the outset, seeks to expose and humiliate them in front of the nation. ITV2 has achieved this by lying to the guys, telling them that they are in fact taking part in a different show called Brotopia, which aims to find Britain’s manliest man.

Even if it were to turn out that everyone involved was in on the whole thing from the beginning — or at least that the fellas gladly agreed to carry on taking part once they’d been told the truth — I’m not sure that would fully excuse such levels of deception on the part of the producers.

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Of course, there will be those viewers who say that the minute a reality show contestant signs the release forms they should take full responsibility for everything that befalls them. In other words, the guys deserve the humiliation for being foolish or egotistical enough to sign up for a naff sounding show with an even naffer sounding title. Given one of them is a 43-year-old adult with a proper day job, there may well be something in that theory.

Meanwhile, their girlfriends deserve to end up with egg on their faces for nominating their partners to take part in Bad Boyfriends. I know I’m probably overthinking here, but if he’s that bad a boyfriend surely it would have been easier to just dump him and find someone better?

If all sixteen contestants — some of whom have been around the reality show block before — were just out for a bit of TV fame and a laugh whatever the cost, I suppose we could maybe cut ITV2 a little slack on the duty of care front.

Watch a trailer for Olivia Attwood's Bad Boyfriends

I’m cutting no one any slack on the lack of originality front though. As I watched this show unfold, I had a nagging feeling that I’d seen it all before.

And then I realised I had. Back in 2018, Channel 5 put out a late night show called Undercover Girlfriends, which also tricked some guys into thinking they were taking part in a "boys will be boys" reality show, when in fact they were being spied on by their undercover girlfriends.

Presumably, ITV2 were relying on the "no one remembers anything that happened before Covid" rule, and to be fair, it did take a while for the penny to drop with me. To add to the stench of familiarity, Bad Boyfriends is filmed on a Greek island, just like Undercover Girlfriends was. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same Greek island.

Watch a trailer for Undercover Girlfriends

Both shows also encourage the blokes to act up and follow the stereotypical behaviour of "boys on the holiday beers", so you could argue there is a wee bit of entrapment and a massive bit of setting them up to fail going on. At some point while watching either show, you may also begin to wonder whether the girlfriends had exaggerated how bad their boyfriends were in order to ensure they got through the show’s selection process. You may even speculate as to whether the relationships were that serious in the first place.

The one big format difference between the shows is that in Bad Boyfriends the fellas are told they’ve been hoodwinked around halfway through the opening episode. Another important difference is that there is interaction between the girls and boys pretty much from the start. If I was being kind I’d say ITV2 did this to differentiate Bad Boyfriends from its Channel 5 predecessor.

If I was being cynical, I’d say ITV2 did it because they wanted to engineer the ultimate drama — one of the girlfriends getting it on with a boyfriend who was not their boyfriend. That would perhaps explain why everyone has been calling it a dating show.

Nothing of that nature happened in the first episode, but, should such grubby shenanigans materialise later on in the run, it wouldn’t be a massive surprise.

You’ll have to let me know if it does, though. Like the host of Brotopia, Pete Wicks, who legged it to the airport the minute his work was done, I don’t plan on sticking around too long on this one.

Olivia Atwood's Bad Boyfriends is on ITV2 and ITVX.

This article originally appeared on Yahoo TV UK at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/olivia-attwood-bad-boyfriends-worst-tv-show-100004835.html