I Kissed a Girl Series 2: BBC Three's Dating Show Returns

When I Kissed a Girl first arrived, it did something British television had never done: it built a dating show entirely around queer women. As the format returns to BBC Three and iPlayer for a second series, it does so as more than a summer romance show — it is a genuine milestone in UK broadcasting, and its comeback lands in the middle of the most competitive dating-TV summer in years.

The premise is bold and disarmingly simple. Singles are matched and, in the show's signature opening move, meet with a kiss before they have exchanged a word. From that startling first contact, the participants live together in a beautiful setting, exploring whether the initial spark can grow into something real. Couples navigate attraction, honesty and the arrival of new singles who threaten to unsettle established pairings, in the familiar rhythms of the dating-format genre — but with a cast and a perspective that mainstream television had, until recently, almost entirely overlooked.

That representation is the show's most significant achievement. As the UK's first all-female dating show, it centres queer women's romantic lives in a way that is celebratory rather than tokenistic. For a great many viewers, seeing their own experiences of attraction, courtship and heartbreak reflected in a mainstream, warmly produced dating format is genuinely meaningful — a corrective to decades in which reality dating was overwhelmingly heterosexual by default. The show treats its participants' stories with the same care, glamour and narrative investment that other formats reserve for straight couples, and that normalisation is quietly powerful.

But representation alone does not sustain a series; the show also has to be good television, and here it benefits from a format with real texture. The opening kiss is a genuinely inspired device. By inverting the usual order of dating — physical connection first, conversation afterwards — it creates immediate intimacy and immediate awkwardness, forcing participants to reckon with chemistry before they have had a chance to construct a persona. It is disarming, funny and revealing, and it sets a tone of honesty that runs through the series.

Beyond the kiss, the show trades in the reliable pleasures of the genre: the slow build of connections, the jealousy when a new arrival turns a head, the difficult conversations, the recouplings and the heartbreak. The emotional stakes are real, and the participants' willingness to be vulnerable on camera gives the series genuine warmth. There is also a distinctive quality to the dynamics, drawn from the specific textures of queer women's dating culture, that gives the show its own identity rather than making it a straightforward remix of an existing format.

Series two arrives, notably, into a crowded field. This summer has been described as a competitive one for dating content, with I Kissed a Girl airing alongside the reality juggernaut of Love Island and other romance formats. That is both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is obvious: attention is finite, and the villa casts a long shadow. The opportunity is that I Kissed a Girl offers something genuinely distinct — a different cast, a different perspective, and a different emotional register. Viewers looking for a dating show that is not the one everyone is already watching have an obvious, and worthwhile, alternative.

The BBC Three and iPlayer home is a good fit. As a platform aimed at younger audiences and unafraid of bold, inclusive commissioning, BBC Three is exactly where a format like this belongs, and the streaming-first availability suits an audience that binges and shares. The show's presence there also signals institutional commitment: this is not a one-off experiment but a returning series, which is itself a form of validation.

For series two, expect the format to build on what worked: the striking opening kisses, the beautiful setting, the slow-burn connections and the inevitable disruptions as new singles arrive. Expect emotional honesty, genuine romance and the heartbreak that any good dating show requires. And expect, once again, the quiet significance of watching a mainstream British dating show that puts queer women's love lives centre stage without apology or caveat.

That, in the end, is the show's dual achievement. It is a warm, fun, occasionally excruciating dating series that does everything the genre asks of it. And it is a piece of television that expanded what British reality dating could look like. Both things are true, and the second series has the chance to consolidate both — proving that the first was not a novelty but the start of something that deserves a permanent place in the schedule. The singles are ready, the kisses are waiting, and the summer of love has a little more range than it used to.