General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20269 min read

I Kissed a Girl (2024 TV series)

I Kissed a Girl is a British reality dating television series in which ten single women who like women are matched into couples and meet for the first time with a kiss, hosted by Dannii Minogue on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer. It premiered on 5 May 2024 as the all-female counterpart to I Kissed a Boy, the UK's first gay dating show, before the BBC announced in March 2026 that it would end after its second series, citing funding challenges.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Ten single girls are matched up and meet for the first time with a kiss, before small talk or introductions³
Host and narrator	Hosted by Dannii Minogue; narrated by TikTok star Charley Marlowe, who took over from Layton Williams¹
Production	Produced by Twofour, part of ITV Studios, for BBC Three⁴
Filming location	A masseria (Italian farmhouse) in Puglia, Italy⁵
Series 1	10 episodes, 5 May to 2 June 2024, on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer⁶
Series 2	Premiered 23 June 2026; 10 episodes, the final series⁷^•⁸
Cancellation	Announced March 2026; the BBC cited funding challenges and said there were no current plans for the show to return²

Spoilers

Plot

Season 1 (2024)

The Masseria, a sun-baked villa in southern Italy, summer 2024. Ten women stand poolside in five pre-arranged couples, and before a single word is spoken they kiss. The kiss is the match, and everything after it is either confirmation or doubt.

The rhythm of the house settles quickly. Days of flirting, terrace lounging, and open conversations about feelings, followed by the Kiss-Off every other evening. Each woman either keeps kissing her current partner or announces she wants someone else, and the reshuffling begins. Anyone left without a kiss at the end of the ceremony is sent home from the Masseria. Because the women talk to each other honestly, often tearfully and often on that terrace, the recouplings land less like betrayals and more like a house collectively working out who actually fits with whom. The Guardian's reviewer noted there are no out-and-out villains and no scenes the contestants would regret later, which is exactly what the season plays like: drama without cruelty.¹¹

Fiorenza's terrace moves are the season's signature seduction, and they go down in history as some of the suavest ever put on TV. She works the terrace the way other contestants work the Kiss-Off: unhurried, all eye contact and timing, turning casual leaning into an event. The Tab's retrospective singles her out for it, and it is the kind of performance that makes the rest of the house sit up and recalculate.¹⁵

The emotional spine of the back half belongs to Meg and Eva. They build a real connection across the recouplings, and in the final chemistry test Meg admits she is falling in love with her. Eva does not reciprocate. It is the season's most quietly devastating scene: no shouting, no villainy, just one woman saying the true thing and the other woman not being able to say it back. The season's other breakout is Amy, who wins the audience long before the finale and leaves the show as a star in her own right.

Season 2 (2026)

The second season keeps the format and turns up the churn. Ten new women arrive at the Masseria, meet with the same poolside first kisses, and immediately begin a recoupling merry-go-round that never lets anyone settle. Autostraddle's finale recap calls it out directly: things were chaotic early, the constant swapping between pairings meant nothing ever had time to breathe, and the result felt less like romance than like watching people string each other on until someone better came along, or didn't.¹⁶

The finale is the Kiss-Off in its grandest form, staged as a ceremony. Each woman in the final four couples must decide, in front of everyone, whether to commit by turning and initiating a kiss, or to stand still and let the relationship end. The physical staging does the storytelling: a turn is a yes, stillness is a no, and everyone watches. Of the four couples that reach the final stage, two turn and kiss, choosing to continue their journey outside the Masseria, and two remain still and part ways.¹⁷

Characters

Dannii Minogue is the host, the face of both Kissed shows, welcoming each new arrival and presiding over the Kiss-Offs with warmth rather than judge's severity. Amy is the breakout star of season 1, so beloved by the audience that she was heralded as the "lesbian Princess Diana" and later crowd-surfed over a festival tent at Mighty Hoopla while waving a Palestinian flag.¹⁸ Fiorenza is season 1's smoothest operator, the terrace flirt whose moves made her an instant fan favorite.¹⁵ Meg and Eva are season 1's central love story, the couple whose mismatched feelings at the final chemistry test give the season its heartbreak. Season 2's cast is larger and more fluid, with the rotating pairings making no single woman the story so much as the churn itself.

Interpretations and controversies

The show's biggest controversy happened off screen. After season 2, the BBC announced that neither I Kissed a Girl nor I Kissed a Boy would be renewed, citing funding challenges.² Contestants and commentators pushed back hard, with one contestant calling the cancellation "two steps back" for LGBTQ+ representation, and the season 1 cast framing the fight under the banner "You can't cancel history."¹⁹ On the creative side, Autostraddle's finale recap argued season 2's constant recoupling amounted to a low-key toxic "wife-swapping" dynamic, a critique of the format rather than of the people in it.¹⁶

Sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations

The show is itself a spin-off of I Kissed a Boy (2023), the BBC's first gay dating show, whose first episode drew over 500,000 viewers across all screens after seven days and was called "relatable" and "historic" by The Guardian and "a reality gamechanger" by Variety.²⁰ After I Kissed a Girl ran, production company Twofour switched the Kissed franchise back to an all-male cast for 2025.¹⁹

Format

The series follows the format established by I Kissed a Boy in 2023. Ten queer, lesbian, and bisexual women are matched in advance and, on first meeting their assigned partner, skip introductions and kiss; only afterwards do they introduce themselves and decide whether to stay paired.⁹^•¹ The couples live together in a masseria, a traditional Italian farmhouse, in Puglia.⁵

Gameplay centers on recurring mechanics. At regular Kiss-Offs, couples stand back-to-back and only turn around for a kiss if they believe the relationship can last; a contestant whose partner does not turn risks elimination.¹ Chemistry Tests are themed challenges and parties designed to stir up drama and reveal more about the contestants, and new singles enter the masseria during the run to test existing couples.⁸ The finale asks each remaining contestant whether she will continue the romance outside the villa, sealed by a final kiss in front of her family, who are flown out for the occasion.⁸

Production and cast

BBC Three commissioned the series as a follow-up to I Kissed a Boy, the UK's first gay dating show, which launched in May 2023 and was produced by the same company, Twofour.¹⁰^•³ Dannii Minogue, who hosted the male version, returned as host and described the show as filling a gap: stories of girls who like girls had been "sadly missing from so much of what we see on TV."³

The narrator changed between the two formats. Layton Williams, who voiced I Kissed a Boy, passed the role to Charley Marlowe, a Liverpudlian social media creator, for series 1; Marlowe returned for series 2.¹^•⁷ The first series cast comprised Cara, Abbie, Fiorenza, Naee, Meg, Demi, Amy, Lisha, Georgia, and Priya; series 2 featured Faye, Nikita, Elise, Tyra, Elisha, Lindsay, Ashlea, Ebony, Renee, and Imogen.¹^•⁷

Broadcast and reception

Series 1 launched on BBC iPlayer on 5 May 2024, with episodes airing on BBC Three on Sunday and Monday nights at 9pm.³ The Guardian's review called it "the sweetest, most touching reality TV in a long time," describing a Love Island-style premise for queer women in which contestants discuss their feelings in calm, face-to-face conversations between the drama and partner swaps.¹¹ Contestants and commentators described the show as groundbreaking for its representation of sapphic women, a group contestants noted was rarely seen on television in this capacity.¹²

The launch episode exceeded BBC Three's linear slot average for adults 16-24 by 290 percent and brought "lighter" viewers to iPlayer, according to ITV Studios.⁴ In May 2024, Hulu acquired the US rights to both I Kissed a Boy and I Kissed a Girl in a package deal; the first season of I Kissed a Girl arrived on the streamer in late August 2024.⁴^•⁸ The format also sold internationally, with TV2 in Denmark, TVNZ in New Zealand, 10Play in Australia, VMI in Ireland, and YES in Israel acquiring the shows, and a Dutch version commissioned.⁴^•¹³

Second series and cancellation

In March 2026, the BBC announced that neither I Kissed a Boy nor I Kissed a Girl would be renewed after the second series of I Kissed a Girl. A spokesperson said the broadcaster was "exceptionally proud" of the format, the UK's first dating show for the LGBTQ+ community, but had to "make difficult choices in light of our funding challenges" and had no current plans for the show to return.²

The second and final series premiered on Tuesday 23 June 2026, with the first two episodes airing from 9.00pm on BBC Three and available on iPlayer from 6.00am that morning; four episodes dropped on day one, followed by two-episode releases each Tuesday.⁷^•⁸ The 10-episode run was expected to conclude with a finale on 14 July 2026.⁸ Cast members described the final season as "bittersweet," and one contestant said the cancellation sent the community a message that it "don't feel worth anywhere."¹⁰ Fans started a petition directed at the BBC that gathered over 20,000 signatures, and the BBC was reported to be developing a dating series open to all genders and sexualities months after the cancellations.⁸^•¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026