Many of the world’s greatest nations have their own editions of the reality show Love Is Blind: Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Germany. As an American who grew up partly in England, I’m a loyal viewer of the US and UK versions of the show, in which contestants are separated from their potential mates by a wall and only meet in person after they’re engaged. Unlike the bikini-clad flirts who populate couple-making shows like Love Island, Love Is Blind’s players are just regular, sometimes awkward, people who are always fully clothed. But they are, of course, attractive. One cast, however, is more attractive than the other.
If you haven’t watched the reliably chaotic Love Is Blind US, your most likely exposure to the show came last year, when cast member Chelsea Blackwell went viral after telling her eventual fiancé that her celebrity look alike was Megan Fox (they’re both brunettes). But beyond that incident, there’s an emerging consensus on Reddit—where these shows are endlessly dissected, and I went to confirm my own suspicions about this—that the US contestants are not nearly as hot as the ones across the pond in the UK. It’s not that the contestants on the U.S. version are ugly. It’s just that their appearances are varied enough that the stakes of the big reveals are, well, a bit higher.
The UK cast, meanwhile? There’s not a single person I’d be unhappy to see on the other end of that impossibly long hallway (even Sam, because he won’t have opened his mouth yet). Freddie’s a cutie, Steven’s a teddy bear, Tom is daddy, Bobby’s a sweetie, Benaiah is a gentleman, and Ollie’s a hunk—and that’s just the men. Sabrina, Catherine, Maria, Nicole, Demi, and Jasmine? All stunners, and the fact that it’s all but certain at least one of them will be fumbled by these men enrages me to my core.
But why? Why are the UK contestants so refreshingly different? An accent can of course be a powerful aphrodisiac, but that’s only for the audience outside of England. I did some digging: While Love Is Blind and Love Is Blind UK are both Netflix properties, they were produced by entirely different companies: Kinetic Content does the former, CPL Productions the latter. A woman named Donna Driscoll heads up US casting, but it’s Cat Spooner who brought us this batch of UK contestants, and for that she will always be famous to me. (She previously worked on other UK spinoffs of shows like Married At First Sight and The Circle.)
I know that what’s “hot” is not black and white. And yet, judging from Reddit, social media, and my group chats, the UK cast is conclusively hotter. It’s not merely their looks. The English contestants are older, more put together, and (except for Sam) genuinely sweeter than what we’ve seen in the US. They aren’t as lost as many of the American contestants seem to be. Even if they aren’t your type on paper, they are desirable because of their seemingly genuine intentions and how little they seem to realize or care that they are being filmed—like when Tom, covered in hot pink lipstick, gets lost in the moment meeting Maria because he’s just so jazzed to finally see her.
We’re still early in the season and the UK cast members have plenty of time to screw up. But when I’m soon watching a weeping woman mildly debase herself on television for a man, this time, at least I’ll understand why I’m invested in it.