U.K. broadcaster ITV’s immensely popular dating reality show “Love Island” has drawn nearly 25,000 audience complaints to U.K. media regulator Ofcom for an episode last week, a record for the show.
In the show, where singletons seek to find their perfect match, male and female participants reside in separate villas and are allowed to be unfaithful.
Last week, the so-called ‘Casa Amor’ week, featured a movie night challenge where islanders watched footage of each other. The islanders were shown a clip where islander Teddy Soares, whose partner is Faye Winter, is seen telling Clarisse Juliette about his attraction to her and that he was “technically single.” Soares and Juliette later kissed during a challenge on the show.
Winter then confronted Soares in a heated manner on the Aug. 6 episode, leading to Ofcom receiving 24,763 complaints, most of which were about Winter’s behavior. Ofcom also received a total of 1,093 complaints about the episodes broadcast on Aug.5, 7 and 8.
“We’ve received a high volume of complaints about last week’s ‘Love Island,’ which is consistent with a trend of growing complaints about high-profile TV shows,” Ofcom said in a statement. “We are carefully assessing the complaints we’ve received, before deciding whether or not to investigate.”
Juliette has since been eliminated from the show and Soares and Winter have reconciled. “I am really sorry for the way I spoke to you,” Winter said. “There’s no excuse for the way I spoke to you or how I raised my voice and no-one should have someone speak to them like that.”
Reacting to Winter’s outburst in an Instagram story on Sunday, her family said: “Faye is human. She may not always get things right. There are human beings managing the islander’s social media pages who will be seriously affected by your comments. We ask that everyone please remembers this before commenting or messaging.”