ealistically, Love Island was never going to come back properly this year. After all, a socially distanced Love Island sounds about as fun as a Love Island where all the contestants have to wear clothes or are capable of independent thought. However, all is not lost. Love Island might have fallen to the coronavirus, but ITV has announced that it’ll be airing Love Island Australia in its place this summer. You probably have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, if you like Love Island then any Love Island is better than no Love Island. But on the other, ITV2 is broadcasting the first series of Love Island Australia, which aired in 2018, which means you might as well just read its Wikipedia page and be done with it. I did, and now I know who fought, who had sex, who won and how long they lasted in the real world. I also know that one of the games in the series is called Any Hole is a Goal, which sort of makes me want to watch it less. Mainly, though, this is a gamble because Australian Love Island isn’t going to be the Love Island that we’re all used to. Television formats have a habit of wobbling about all over the place when they’re sold internationally. Take The Apprentice, for example. Here the contestants are all agitated letting agents who have to essentially compete for a Wowcher. In America, at least for a time, they competed for the privilege of not being forced to live in a tent. Perhaps the most glaring instance of regional difference is Deal or No Deal. The American version was basically a dystopian capitalist prime-time nightmare; a gleaming hangar stuffed with an army of near-identical Vaseline-teethed models (including Meghan Markle) clad in as few clothes as possible, each clutching the sort of silver briefcase that used to contain nuclear bombs on 24. Over here, meanwhile, it was Noel Edmonds arguing on the phone at teatime in Bristol. They’re like night and day. For a show that is basically just people cooking dinner over and over, MasterChef also varies from country to country. Here it’s Gregg Wallace going “WOOAR” at puddings, but in America it’s Gordon Ramsay apparently trying to summon a tumour in his colon through the power of manufactured rage alone. The Australian version – often the most-watched show in the entire country – is as much an emotional bootcamp as it is a cookery show. The Portuguese version has a “mega audition” round, where 500 different chefs are trialled. In Italy the series ends with confetti, gold coins and unexpectedly moving marriage proposals. And then you have Come Dine With Me, which vacillates so much from country to country that it barely even counts as the same show. The titles alone tell a story about each country’s attitudes towards food and class and competition. In Argentina, it’s called Divine Food. In France it’s An Almost Perfect Dinner. In the Czech Republic it goes by the aggressive name Spread! In the Netherlands it’s the more apologetic Tastes Differ. Romania calls it Cake TV, Bulgaria calls it The Icing on the Cake and in Hungary it’s inexplicably called Fish on the Cake. Truly, it’s our differences that make us. In fairness to Love Island, at least the international differences are relatively minor. All the contestants, regardless of country, are so staggeringly homogeneous that they looked like they’ve all been sicked up through some sort of pulsating central alien ovipositor. Throw a stone into any of the villas and it would be guaranteed to bounce off a giant eyebrow onto someone’s abs. There are slight fluctuations here and there – couples in the German version often share showers with the lights on, while the winners of the first Finnish series spent their prize money on a washing machine – but for the most part the format is rigid. So maybe Love Island Australia will do. If not, perhaps next summer ITV2 can show repeats of Fish on the Cake instead.