WELCOME to Paradise. Here the sun always shines, the men have six packs, the women have curves in all the right places and the only thing you need to worry about is how much grafting (to use the show's lingo) you have to put into attracting the opposite sex.

Unless you've been living in deep freeze, it's hard to escape the cultural phenomenon that is the Bafta-winning, dating reality TV show, Love Island. It revolves around a dizzying array of “sexy singles” who purport to be looking for true love, along with the £50,000 prize money (or, let's be honest, a launch pad for a celeb career), and spend up to eight weeks in a luxury villa in Mallorca trying to convince audiences that they've found the man, or woman, of their dreams. It's knowingly narrated for laughs by Scottish comedian Iain Stirling and hosted by reality TV veteran Caroline Flack.

Whether or not it's working out for contestants, Love Island's fourth series is certainly pulling in the audiences of ITV2's dreams. An average 2.9 million people tuned in for the launch episode on June 4, more than double that of the first episode in 2017. Last week it was the highest-rating TV show at 9pm, with audiences – more than half of whom are in the 16-34 age range (the holy grail of TV producers) – peaking at 3.4million viewers. It has an overall audience share of 16 percent, that rises to almost 50 percent of younger viewers, and a whole range of merch.

Even if it sounds closer to your version of hell than paradise, there is no denying its widespread influence. But it's only a daft game show, right? As with any mainstream hit there's been plenty of sneering, about those who watch as much as those on-screen. In some ways you can see why.

In a month in which Donald Trump's immigration policies at the US border saw toddlers ripped from their mothers' arms and children kept in cages, while others were bombed in Yemen, could we really feel justified in worrying about whether Wes Nelson would be best off sticking with 29-year-old air hostess Laura Anderson or cracking on with surgically enhanced Megan Barton-Hanson? As Brexit negotiations continued to hurtle towards the cliff-edge, dragging us all towards who-knows-what, was it really OK to stuff our fingers in our ears until 9pm when we could relax into wondering if increasingly uptight and awkward A&E doctor Alex George would finally convince a girl to fancy him?

Dr Faye Woods, lecturer in film and television at Reading University, dismisses this either/or view. She points out that while audiences of this female-targeted series are met with derision, it's not just socially acceptable, but actively expected, that men will down tools to watch the World Cup.

“This is an event bringing the nation together that isn’t terrible men’s footie,” she says. “Love Island gives us that space to breathe and focus on something else, a little oasis of pleasure amidst our current darkness. We can hold multiple thoughts in our brain simultaneously, and refocusing for a while every night is healthy for our well-being.”

Which seems fair enough. And who doesn't like watching beautiful people? There's a fascination not just in their symmetrical features and gym-fit bodies, but in the amount of effort that goes into grooming – the carefully layered tans and whitened teeth, shaved chests, perfectly arched brows and painted nails (which mostly happens off camera, as if by magic).

“It's a kind of vicarious pleasure,” reckons Gladeana McMahon, a psychological adviser for reality shows such as the early Big Brother series, and the driving force behind the production of the “Ethical Guidelines for Reality TV” produced by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. “This is the gladiatorial pit without the violence.”

But as she points out, ITV2 has set out to get big audiences by going for a winning formula, that is, in many ways, nostalgic and safe. While it's supposedly all about glamour and sexual sizzle – once you're coupled up with someone you share a double bed in the dorm and see what you can get away with under the duvet – this dream seems in some ways weirdly old-fashioned.

In an age in which woke millennials are seemingly increasingly accepting of gender as a fluid rather than a binary concept, the stereotypes on display – where men talk about treating women like queens, being “gentlemen”, and some of the girls play dumb to get the guy – pull progressive views up short.

It's all about the archetypes. Adam Collard – trading on Garden of Eden associations and looking for temptation – describes himself as tall, dark and handsome, with great abs. What more could anyone want, he wonders aloud? (A little bit of respect and common decency it turns out, but more of that later.)

As Nicola Bishop, a researcher in English and television at Manchester Metropolitan University, notes: “This is ‘pin-up’ TV with little diversity of body types. There is a lot of readable anxiety among the male competitors about measuring up against perceived physical ideals of masculinity.”

The love on this heteronormative island is not for everyone. There are lots of reality TV shows that have been very positive about representing LGBT contestants – Brian Dowling, winner of Big Brother's second series, is testament to that. This isn't one of them. While last year's Love Island did include a short bisexual romance between two of the women, and host Caroline Flack hinted there may be gay contestants in the future, bosses are clear. It's a dating show for straight couples and everyone needs to fancy each other. They claim they wouldn't rule out a standalone show but none is forthcoming so far.

As versions of romance go, despite the bed-swapping, it's an interestingly traditional one. Several commentators have pointed out that with its claustrophobic sense of ennui, codified courting behaviour and double-crossing, the dream on offer has more than a whiff of Jane Austen about it all.

“It's the Diana story, it's Cinderella,” adds McMahon. Considering the number of people getting married in the UK is at an all-time low, there's an awful lot of talk about it. Adam claims there's not a girl in the house that he wouldn't want as a wife, while Laura hints to 20-year-old Wes, after sharing a bed with him for a few weeks, that she's on the look-out for a husband.

While in the real world there might be an increasing acceptance of less traditional relationships, or even non-monogamous ones, what's on offer here is what writer and columnist Laurie Penny refers to as Love TM. This search for Mr or Mrs Right is what she calls “the narrow romantic fantasy” that trumps all other forms of love, which is put on a pedestal as the answer to all our life problems and insecurities and never questioned. As beautiful lawyer Rosie Williams, ditched by Adam, cries to the other girls “I just want to be enough”, you wish she already knew she was.

It is her experience too that shows the darker side of the fairytale – Hans Christian Andersen rather than Disney – with Women's Aid going as far as issuing a warning about spotting the signs of abuse in response to Adam's “gaslighting” of her (a term used to describe psychological manipulation aimed at making someone question their version of reality). The charity said there were clear warning signs in Adam's behaviour of emotional abuse and called on viewers to speak out against unhealthy relationships.

Faye Woods claims that though it's “distressing emotionally” to watch this play out on television, it's been valuable “in terms of understanding and awareness of everyday behaviour”. She adds: “I think of all the people who may have dismissed coercive control, but then saw it in practice with Adam and Rosie and then understood it.”

Then there's the issue of race. From the off it was not lost on black women writers and commentators such as Danielle Dash who noticed the way the statuesquely beautiful Samira Mighty – the only black woman in the house – was over-looked by all the boys and ended up with Alex because he'd been usurped in his first choice by another man. On Friday, with another cohort of boys arriving in the villa resolutely uninterested in her, she finally broke down claiming to be “so confused”.

On the outside there is less confusion as people fit the pieces together. There's the way the public “forgot” to vote for singer Alexandra Burke, who outdanced all her competitors week after week on Strictly Come Dancing and repeatedly ended up in the dance off, the black girls passed over in dating show Take Me Out, the racist incidents in Big Brother House's gone by. Reality TV, argue many, has form.

Dr Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, hasn't watched it but isn't surprised by the concerns. “Reality TV is popular because it resonates with people,” he says. “So we shouldn't be surprised when it replicates the racism that we see in society. Actually television often shows a world that is artificially equal. It's very rare now that something like Midsomer Murders – showing an all-white world – will be commissioned. So we sometimes get a distorted view when in actual fact the country is really segregated. In reality TV we see the reality that society is dominated by ideas of white supremacy.”

It's not just the way the characters interact – it's also the way it's cast and edited, he claims. “If you look at who made the show, who picked the characters, who commissioned it in the first place, you'll probably find that it reflects a bias,” he adds. “They [producers] should be mindful of that, more responsible. But fixing Love Island isn't going to do anything. It's a symptom of the problem.”

Though unlikely to start viewing now, he admits it's probably more important than some give it credit for. It's certainly important to the millions of fans, following contestants' Instagram accounts in their droves, live-tweeting their own social commentary, or dissecting it with their mates on group chat. On Twitter there's support for Samira, complaints about Adam and other men's behaviour towards the women, and of course the inevitable backlash, calling out double standards. Discussion around the “sexual shaming” of the women, when contestants were asked to share the number of people they'd slept with, was red hot. On screen Laura's 30 was initially met with embarrassed silence, while Adam's 200 with backslapping.

Yet writing in the Times earlier this month Caitlin Moran claimed it is that interaction that makes Love Island an unlikely vehicle for feminism “because we live in an era when every one of the classic tactics used by these men – gaslighting, denial, coercion, guilt – is met with a fabulous deconstruction on social media. For the first time we have live, rolling footage of total ledges trying the kind of mindf***y shenanigans that previously have happened in the privacy of bars or the back of cabs ... That smirk! If you see a man smirk like that, leave immediately by the nearest exit, for you are dealing with a human trash-fire.”

Online chat is also about spotting who is genuine (ie the loveable Dani Dyer and her boyfriend, stationery salesman Jack Fincham, whose loyalty during separation had hearts melting) and who is faking it. Who is merely playing the game? It's a rolling audience commentary that underlines the fact that just being young doesn't make you dumb.

As Faye Woods says: “Reality TV is never real, and all viewers know this. It is non-viewers who attempt to dismiss them as gullible. Reality TV is built for savvy, sophisticated viewers, who are able to pivot effortlessly between awareness of this as constructed process and an emotional immersion.”

Paradise, then, might be a great way to switch off. But, it turns out, Paradise deconstructed might have plenty to tell us about our society and youth culture today, as long as we're ready to listen.