Netflix’s Love Is Blind UK proves it can outshine Love Island in one major area fans didn’t expect.

When it comes to genuine romance, Love Is Blind: UK blows Love Island out of the water. The first four-episode drops of the Netflix series show more true romance than the entirety of Love Island Season 12. Love Island has become a gauntlet of shady characters seeking reality TV fame while utilizing the series’ emphasis on “exploring connections” as an excuse to avoid developing a meaningful relationship.

Meanwhile, the focus on marriage in Love Is Blind puts the show on a different level when compared to other dating shows. Love Is Blind has the advantage of proposal pressure, which is a more effective tool at winnowing out bad-faith actors. The premiere of Love Is Blind: UK just showed that, no matter how large of a cultural phenomenon Love Island becomes, the fact that Love Is Blind is inherently structured to prioritize romance makes it the superior dating franchise.

Rather than meeting a bevy of young, sexy, and often shirtless singles, the element of building a connection through a wall on Love Is Blind puts an emphasis on meaningful conversations. As the couples date blindly in the pods, there are few distractions from their conversations about their life goals, compatibility factors, and future ambitions. Compared to the visually stimulating neon-explosion of the Love Island villa, where the couples gossip about each other as they strut around in swimwear, watching the Love Is Blind cast get to know each other on a deep emotional level is by far the more romantic scenario. Billy Jervis Jr. and Ashleigh Berry are a good example of this in the first few episodes of Love Is Blind: UK Season 2, where the couple spend their first date laughing together before getting emotional in a conversation about the importance of family.

The two eventually get engaged through the wall in the pods.

Couples having blind conversations about their personal histories and compatibility guarantees that mental stimulation is prioritized at the beginning of the season. The viewers get to know the couples individually on a deeper level as they each form their own romantic connections. While the same can technically be said of the Love Island bunch, the conversations in the Villa tend to follow a specific formula filled with the series’ jargon, whereas the conversations in the pods are significantly less superficial. While drama does tend to follow once the couples see each other for the first time and move on to the stage where they live together in “the real world” outside the pods, the emphasis on romance starts early in a season of Love Is Blind, and tends to only grow from there.

While Love Island has the advantage of an overwhelming number of episodes with a whopping 49 per season, the “pods” segment of Love Is Blind offers more romance in four episodes than the Islanders achieve in their ample time lounging about in the Villa. The contestants spending time bonding in the pods allows viewers to connect more deeply with them as individuals, making them feel more emotionally invested in their journeys even without the ability to vote for their weekly favorites. Perhaps because the goal is to end up walking down the aisle, the relationships that develop on Love Is Blind not only stem from meaningful conversations, but they have more depth than the superficial connections that develop on Love Island.

Romance is more meaningful in the Love Is Blind franchise, even when the couples get into typical reality TV drama. For instance, when Clay Gravesande stood AD Smith up at the altar and said he couldn’t marry her in Season 6 of Love Is Blind, viewers were so attached to their journey as a couple that AD’s heartbreak was much more poignant than any break-up on Love Island. Then, Clay taking ownership at the reunion and singing AD’s praises the whole time was even more satisfying, knowing the journey of personal growth their time together on the series had initiated in the young man. This kind of emotional maturity makes the romance more effective in the Love Is Blind franchise, blowing its Islander competitors out of the water.