Strictly Come Dancing

[Bored Of Education]

The family watch this on a Saturday evening occasionally but it's not something I am an avid watcher of (yeah right) but I have to say that the winning dance was genuinely excellent especially as it was the showtune type that I hate normally.

I will now don a tin hat and retire to the back of the sofa

[diggedy derek]

Strictly Come Dancing

It's essentially a glorified excuse to ogle fit, toned bodies, SCD, isn't it? It's all rather sordid.

[Bored Of Education]

Strictly Come Dancing

Yes but there are some bad points as well.

SCD?

[Guest]

Strictly Come Dancing

It's essentially a glorified excuse to ogle fit, toned bodies, SCD, isn't it?

No, I don't think so at all. Some of the pro women wear daring get-ups on occasion, but you can't really do most of the stuff they do in slacks and a nice blouse.

Absolutely top-class television, is what Strictly is.

[Hofzinser]

Strictly Come Dancing

I quite enjoy SCD when I watch it. What I totally object to, however, is the way it gets into BBC news bulletins and the like. Unless Camilla Dallerup has been taken hostage by Islamic terrorists then whatever happens on the program is not actually news.

[Sam]

Strictly Come Dancing

In fairness, ITV do the same with the X-Factor. It just doesn't get noticed because who watches the news on ITV?

[diggedy derek]

Strictly Come Dancing

I quite enjoy SCD when I watch it. What I totally object to, however, is the way it gets into BBC news bulletins and the like.

Employees of BBC publications are even spreading the word on here. It's viral marketing gone mad.

Seriously though, I agree the cross-promotion is infuriating. The worst example was on Football bloody Focus, where Manish somehow managed crowbar in a SCD reference in connection with that not-especially-funny Tore Andre Flo clip on the Norwegian version of the show.

[diggedy derek]

Strictly Come Dancing

In fairness, ITV do the same with the X-Factor.

But there are good reasons for expecting higher standards of objectivity on the BBC, being state funded and all.

[Guest]

Strictly Come Dancing

The BBC News website had this thing as its joint second biggest story yesterday evening (it was one of the two prominently-placed stories below the main lead). Whether you enjoy the programme or not, that is embarrassing.

[Mumpo]

Strictly Come Dancing

Strictly Come Dancing is absurdly bad. As if it needs pointing out, it's the 'dancing' programme where dancing is firmly relegated to the back seat, whilst we gape at celebrities first dressed in casualwear and falling over, then (as has been noted above) flashing their skimpily clad frames across the floor, then gushing with gratitiude for the clemency of the judges and voting public. And here's the thing about Strictly Come Dancing (please, never simply 'Strictly') that also peeves me - they want flippant soundbytes from 'personality' judges and the instant hit of a simple from-10 score, but they also want to throttle the teats of the phone vote cash cow, so the viewers get to dispense their own judgement, too; a cake-and-eat-it duality of incompatible systems that leads to voting farces such as the one witnessed last week - and today.

[E10 Rifle]

Strictly Come Dancing

I've been (kind of reluctantly) converted to SCD by various women in my life and, you know, the Horse is right. It's the antithesis of competition/reality shows like The Apprentice - essentially a celebration of bullying and greed ring-led by a comprehensively charmless third-rate businessmen - in that, celebrity-focused though SCD may be, it's about learning to do something fun and joyful.

It's as important a part of what the licence fee and public service broadcasting are all about, in its way, as Panorama is.

[wingco]

Strictly Come Dancing

I've a raft of little cultural quibbles re SCD - especially the way in which programmes like this have supplanted the sort of energy which once used to go into making pop music a potent, watercooler, real-time and entertaining public force, or the way in which bods like myself, y'know, crits, are cast as pantomime villains for the crime of being expert and discriminating, leading to absurd, cut-off-your-nose decisions on the part of the public to carry on voting for John Sergeant, f'rinstance. Not to Carmodise, but to me, that sort of perversity is faintly related to the Americans voting in transparently cretinous and incapable Republican Presidents because they mistrust anyone who might actually be up to the job as being kinda intellectual and book-learning types.

But I see where E10 is coming from. Anytime I go back and see family in Leeds, the discussion among the family from my dear old Mum to my 15 year niece is about SCD. It's a warming reminder of the 70s and the Saturday night continuum from The Generation Game through to The Two Ronnies etc which felt somehow part and parcel with the whole post-war consensus that entertainment could have a sort of uniting quality, remind us that we were all somehow in the same boat. Funny how Brucie should be a common factor in all of that.

[My Name Is Ian]

Strictly Come Dancing

See, I just assumed that people voted for Sergeant because, in a way, it's more entertaining to see people dancing badly than it is to see them dancing well, but I share Wingco's distaste for the experts being cast as the baddies when they're put on there to point out the shortcomings in peoples performances.

Otherwise, yeah, it's a reasonable way to pass an hour or so with the family on the rare occasions that I see them, and it's a million preferable to that dreadful nonsense that they churn out on ITV. It gets under your skin, and it has far less of the complete fucking vitriol that seems to be so much a part and parcel of modern television. Mind you, I do become much less cynical at this time of year.

A relative of my mums is Bruce Forsyth's driver, by the way, and is unfailing in telling us what a nice man he is. Of a dying breed, though.

[E10 Rifle]

Strictly Come Dancing

To be honest wingco, I think Strictly occupies space around an entirely different metaphorical watercooler from pop. Programmes like that always have. The Generation Game never got in the way of punk or disco after all.

[wingco]

Strictly Come Dancing

Not then. Now's different. Nowadays I think "Strictly" is hoovering up some of the spare energy that was once expended on things like punk and disco. Hence the formidable viewing figures it's garnering and the sort of cultural potency it's engendering which something like The Generation Game never got. SCD is more things to more people than The Generation Game ever was. There's a difference. I can feel it in my bunions.

[Guest]

Strictly Come Dancing

I doubt anyone is really that interested, but as there are so few subjects on which I have expert-level knowledge . . .

The Sergeant thing wasn't a case of discerning judges being presented as villains. In general, they're not - Craig Revel Horwood has something of the bogeyman about him but that's all quite light-hearted, and he's only one of four. The Strictly audience has always been split between those who will vote for a joker like Sergeant (or, a few years back, Chris Parker off of EastEnders) despite their ineptitude, and those who resolutely back the most technically able dancers, regardless of their charm. Far from being a weakness as Mumpo says, this perpetual contrast between "dancing" and "entertainment" is one of the format's many strengths (another being that dancing as a discipline isn't relegated to the back seat at all, quite the opposite - even the inept triers are entertaining specifically because their dancing is bad, and the great joy of the show is watching amateurs master a skill that's genuinely impressive and worthwhile). It's a big part of why the wingcos and many millions of others are obsessed with it. (By the way, the phone lines are non-profit.)

What happened this year was a) Sergeant was incredibly bad and b) the show panicked and tried to force him off by asking/allowing the judges to be just a bit too rude to him. This just spurred his supporters on and turned his survival into a news story. The judges quickly changed their tone completely, but it was too late. If they'd kept quiet, people would have naturally stopped voting for Sergeant when the gag wore thin - as he realised, hence his decision to leave. He made up some guff about it being possible he would win, but he's very much not the cuddly, avuncular joker he came across as - he knew the score and was playing the show and the public like a violin. Reality shows making the news does seem distasteful on the face of it, but this was fascinating - an example of a very popular cultural phenomenon experiencing how fragile that popularity is, especially when it's based on viewers interacting as well as just tuning in.

As far as Strictly v punk goes, I think Strictly is a symptom, not a cause: its popularity across generations (it does well among 18-24s) arguably could only happen in a world where pop has run out of things to say, and young people don't have any movements like punk and disco to commit to, and wouldn't understand why they should.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Strictly Come Dancing

For me strictly come dancing lost all its appeal when they voted off Peter "the dancing refrigerator" Schmeichel. Not even the presence of John "The terpsichorean whale" Barnes could make me watch it again.

The first time I ever saw any programme vaguely related to the X-factor was that Peter Kay spoof. Saturday night television really is a totally dead zone in the UK until MOTD comes on isn't it?

[Sam]

Strictly Come Dancing

E10 Rifle wrote:

I've been (kind of reluctantly) converted to SCD by various women in my life and, you know, the Horse is right. It's the antithesis of competition/reality shows like The Apprentice - essentially a celebration of bullying and greed ring-led by a comprehensively charmless third-rate businessmen - in that, celebrity-focused though SCD may be, it's about learning to do something fun and joyful.

It's as important a part of what the licence fee and public service broadcasting are all about, in its way, as Panorama is.

I don't quite agree with your final sentence there E10, but to the first paragraph - exactly. I sort-of liked it before, but since I started learning salsa (a minor side point: the one thing I really hate about the show is the way Tess Daley pronounces that word) I've enjoyed it a lot more because, frankly, I'd love the chance to give it a go with a professional partner myself.

The thing that pisses me off a bit less than Daley's 'solsa' is the fact that they so frequently use re-arrangements of (western) pop songs rather than a song pertaining to the actual genre in hand. I mean when I move to Argentina I'll be going to quite a few tango classes, and that's so I can dance to tango. Not so I can dance to Robbie Williams-plus-an-accordian.

Oh and to those who replied to my reply to the news comment further upthread - I gave the impression that I didn't have a problem with the winner being announced on the news. That was misleading, because I do. I just felt it worth pointing out 'in the interests of impartiality', as the Beeb would say, that the other broadcasters do it too.

I am also grateful to the show for having introduced me to Alesha Dixon, because without Strictly Come Dancing I wouldn't have a clue who she was.

[G-Man]

Strictly Come Dancing

It's essentially a glorified excuse to ogle fit, toned bodies, SCD, isn't it? It's all rather sordid.

Strictly Cum Dancing?

Anyway, they had a two-day marathon of that show on one of these BBC satellite channels we get here (the series won by, I think, Matt Dawson). What an awful show. Fakin' It for celebs. This show aids the cult of the celebrity (anyone remember the name of Emma Bunton's dancing partner? Matt Dawson's?), which is, well, undesirable.

[diggedy derek]

Strictly Come Dancing

Actually, G-man, quite a lot of the dancers have become celebrities in their own right, now – and equally undesirable outcome.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Strictly Come Dancing

In the context of UK TV, I'd say it goes some way toward dismantling the cult of celebrity if anything. Having to perform at such a high level is a great leveller: it's basically a talent show where contestants have to put themselves to the test and frequently achieve something genuinely impressive, instead of just sitting around being nasty or fake-friendly to each other and angling for photoshoots in Nuts magazine.

Which is why I don't come out feeling as if the nation's in the grip of a peculiar collective mental illness - as I always do after getting caught up in a Celebrity Big Brother or the jungle one - when I watch Strictly Come Dancing. It's just quite a nice programme, really.

[David Agnew]

Strictly Come Dancing

Another coming out of the SCD closet (come on, I love Eurovision, what did you expect).

Hofzinser wrote:

I quite enjoy SCD when I watch it. What I totally object to, however, is the way it gets into BBC news bulletins and the like. Unless Camilla Dallerup has been taken hostage by Islamic terrorists then whatever happens on the program is not actually news.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no difference between the result of a sporting event that attracts 14 million viewers making the news, and a TV competition that attracts 14 million viewers making the news. I find complain about the latter and not the former pure snobbery.

The Horse wrote:

The Sergeant thing wasn't a case of discerning judges being presented as villains. In general, they're not - Craig Revel Horwood has something of the bogeyman about him but that's all quite light-hearted, and he's only one of four.

Revel-Horwood's background is choreography, and the very best choreographers will, as part of their job, point out every single mistake - Revel-Horwood does that as part of his judging. Arlene Phillips used to do it too, but in recent seasons has decided to be a cliche machine instead. I wish they'd replace her to be honest - the other three are all great in their own way.

The Strictly audience has always been split between those who will vote for a joker like Sergeant (or, a few years back, Chris Parker off of EastEnders) despite their ineptitude, and those who resolutely back the most technically able dancers, regardless of their charm.

I don't think Chris Parker got the 'shit dancer' votes, he was a bit off a teen heartthrob at the time, and got his votes because of that. There hasn't been anyone else that ticks that particular box since. To get the joker votem you have to be entertainingly shit (like Sargeant), likeable (Kate Garraway) or a real trier (Kate Garraway - who was injured and could barely train for the first few weeks)

What happened this year was a) Sergeant was incredibly bad and b) the show panicked and tried to force him off by asking/allowing the judges to be just a bit too rude to him. This just spurred his supporters on and turned his survival into a news story. The judges quickly changed their tone completely, but it was too late.

There appear to be a large section of people who vote not based on the dance, or the comments, but on how many points Revel-Horwood gives, so as to 'neutralise' him. That's why Gary Rhodes survived the first week despite a) being a tosser generally, b) being dislikable on the programme (by arguing with his profressional - the popular Karen Hardy) and c) being an non-entertaining shit dancer. But as soon as Revel-Horwood gave him 1, he was safe. The following week with a more reasonable score, and he was gone.

SamLKelly wrote:

a minor side point: the one thing I really hate about the show is the way Tess Daley pronounces that word

See also: Cup-pulls, Jud-jizz.

Diggedy Derek wrote:

Actually, G-man, quite a lot of the dancers have become celebrities in their own right, now – and equally undesirable outcome.

That's no bad thing, though, is it? Unlike other reality shows, the likes of Darren Bennett (Emma Bunton's partner) and especially Lilia Kopylova (Matt Dawson's) have becoem famous for being talented. Most (if not all) of the dancers are British and/or World champions, and it is a discipline that requires a lot of practice and dedication.

[Bored Of Education]

Strictly Come Dancing

Thank goodness that I missed Gary Rhodes. I hate that cunt on so many levels

[G-Man]

Strictly Come Dancing

Is he that TV chef guy? He comes across well on his cooking programmes.

Oh, and point taken about the celeb angle. Of course, not living in Blighty, I have no idea that the dancers become celebs themselves.

[Mr Beast]

Strictly Come Dancing

Phoebe wrote:

I love Eurovision, what did you expect).

Then you will be as delighted as I am to learn from BBC news that after a series of no point fiascos, Andrew Lloyd Webber has made it "his mission" that Team GB win this in 2009. To the extent that he has been persuaded to write the song.

Presumably a team of crack popsters will be eliminated by a series of public phone in's on a Saturday night with many tears along the way.

You wonder why nobody else has come up with a similar format before, it's dynamite.