Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Ice Ice Baby
Dancing On Ice – ReviewedITV Sunday 22nd February 2009
I try very hard not to pre-judge any TV shows I watch, and I had to try with added extra effort with Dancing On Ice. I had expected it to be camp, loud, and unashamed, and it was all of those, but why shouldn’t it be?
I expected to find the sheer length of the show, split into two sections, too much, and a turn-off. The truth is that I loved it.
Introduced by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, the show essentially takes over on ITV on Sunday evenings. I had heard of Ms Willoughby but, as they say, I had not seen her work, and who could ever find anything to dislike about Phillip Schofield? He manages the difficult task of coming across as a thoroughly good chap, without straying into the zone of blandness, so prevalent on early evening mainstream television.
In this review, I won’t go into detail about the background of all the contestants. That’s why the internet was invented, with its handmaidens, Google and Wikipedia. Neither will I stray into the world of terrible puns that leap out of the page at me, ‘skating on thin ice’ et al.
The show started on an odd note. For no discernible reason, other than to follow the format of old variety shows, we found ourselves watching Will Young, standing on a box, on the ice rink. Now, Will can really sing, and equally, can sustain a performance without the requirement of ‘added extras’.
However, extras we got – in the form of Christopher Dean and Jayne Torvill, skating around poor Will as he tried to get his latest single across to us. It isn’t that Christopher and Jayne aren’t welcome to turn up with their ‘blades’ and their chemistry and all, it’s just that turning up at that moment was like… well it was like David Beckham taking a free kick to win us the World Cup, and looking up to see Darcey Bussell giving us her Sugar Plum Fairy in the penalty area.
The first two celebrity dancers were Zoe Salmon, and then, Melinda Messenger. Both did ok, but I would have been a bit lost without Tony Gubba’s summary of these ‘required elements’ that all the contenders had to include in their performance.
Next, we had the old tried and tested insert, when emotions are flagging. Donal MacIntyre was ‘presented’ with a tear inducing video message from his children. I think the last time I saw MacIntyre on television was when he was having his laptop nicked, from some inner city tower block, during one of those undercover shows he used to front. Because of the extremely skimpy nature of his dancing costume, we could see that Donal had nothing on him worth stealing this time.
He was doing fine, then wobbled and didn’t quite recover, leading to lower scores from the judges.
Ah yes – the judges! We have to employ judges. There is a rather complicated procedure to ensure that one dancing couple is dropped each week. Suffice to say that the judges’ marks account for fifty per cent of the total.
There are five of ‘em, which is probably at least one, if not two, more than required, in terms of speaking parts. Of course, we need the ‘one the crowd have to boo’, and with Simon Cowell busy elsewhere, the mantle of boo-boy is worn by Jason Gardiner, who first came to our attention on the British version of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Gardiner laps up this role like a smooth and silky Siamese cat elegantly licking the last of the cream.
Four of these five judges have some background in ice skating. The odd woman out, is West End and Broadway hoofer, Ruthie Henshall. We can say with some confidence, that Ruthie can sing, dance and act, but her qualifications to comment on, and judge, celebrity ice skaters are less obvious. Most of her remarks are set in a context of a lack of understanding, and a bluster that does not suit her personality. God Bless Ruthie and all that, but what she is doing here is a mystery, that could only possibly be unravelled by close questioning of the production team, and Ruthie’s agent.
It was after Donal MacIntyre’s performance that I had an epiphany moment. I found myself pondering on the purpose of this show. Then I thought "What The Hell?" and gave in to the sheer joie de vivre of the whole thing, the humour, the campness and the fun of it all.
A likeable gal called Roxanne turned up next, and she had, apparently, tried a particular routine called (rather wonderfully) the ‘headbanger manoeuvre’ last week, and it hadn’t worked. I should stress that this is rather more meaningful than ‘not working’ as the manoeuvre involves the participant being hurled around by the ankles, some inches above the ice. I suspect it is not called the headbanger without due cause.
Roxanne survived this routine, completing the scary whirling round by the ankles thing, and kept all her facial features intact for another week.
Next up was Jessica Taylor, from Liberty X, and wife of Kevin Pietersen, the England cricketer, who managed to be captain last year for about five minutes, and then wasn’t again.
Jessica too had the emotional video message. Kevin Pietersen was in the West Indies and about to lose a test match, but didn’t know it at the time, as he relayed his best wishes to his missus. It was as if phones had never been invented.
The last two on the ice were from the ends of the skating spectrum. Ray Quinn had, it seemed, not shown much empathy with the ice dancing world during his short showbiz career, but in this show, he has proved to be a natural. He has confidence, poise, and an affinity with his dancing partner that belies their short time together.
Ahem… on the other hand, day time TV presenter, Coleen Nolan, has as much talent for ice dancing as Kate Winslet would for wrestling.
Coleen, her skates, her partner, and the ice, do not make up a winning team. However, someone on these shows always has to be on ‘a journey’ and it is Coleen’s fate to have a one way ticket through to the next round, presumably on the sympathy vote.
The show is then brought to a pause, and we are given the phone numbers to call, to vote for our favourites. ITV then showed an episode of the usual type of Sunday evening programming (Wild At Heart, a sort of Doctor Doolittle in South Africa).
When we return, an hour later, the first fifteen minutes of the second show are spent watching a ‘greatest hits’ of the earlier hour. This induces a strange and alarming sense of déjà vu to the unwary, and anyone who fell asleep during Wild At Heart would think they were in a Lost style time shift.
The two dancers who poll the lowest scores have a ‘dance off’ and then the five judges decide who stays and who goes. Oddly, all of this was the least compelling part of the show. Perhaps if you have followed from the beginning and have adopted a favourite, it means more to that regular viewer.
The usual tension, now so part of the fabric of elimination shows, as the judges gave their verdict, and suddenly it was all over. Phillip Schofield had to shout, literally, in an audio mixing nightmare, over the top of the applauding and cheering crowd, and they were gone, along with Melinda Messenger, who received no votes from the panel, and expected to be voted out, before they had even danced their way through the eliminator.
Dancing On Ice won’t break any new ground in our understanding of the human condition. It probably won’t win any BAFTAs. It will almost certainly never feature in our memories longer than its life span.
Will I watch it next Sunday? Dammit I suspect I will.
# posted by Terence : 10:12 PM
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Cooking With Lamb
Come Dine With MeFood and television is not often a happy marriage. Cooking programmes, in particular, find themselves at Relate trying to save the marriage, not for the sake of the children, but for the welfare of the raspberry coulis.
The beauty of food, and the consumption of it, is of course, a multi-sensory experience. In reality, we see it, smell it, touch it, taste it, hopefully don’t hear it, but you see what I mean.
On tv, the best we can hope for is a two dimensional hint at what has been cooked, which is why, since the early days of television, cookery shows have relied on personality and individuality to make the programme a success. To this day, we still rely on a cohort or ‘guest’ of the chef, to have a tasting on our behalf, and we can only judge by the level of the ‘oooh!’ and the ‘mmmm!’ whether the dish is a success.
Fanny Cradock presented food in the manner of a headmistress, chiding the nation, and dishing out lines with the ration coupon recipes. Appearing in the kitchen in evening gown and pearls, Fanny would berate her (not really married…) husband, Johnny, and cartoon henpecked husbands across the land winced as they peeled the spuds.
In the late sixties and early seventies, Graham Kerr, the ‘Galloping Gourmet’ became the staple diet of afternoon viewing with his glamorous, frantic personality, and his penchant for using rich ingredients. Kerr would finish the show by finding a pretty woman from the audience, with whom he would flirtingly share the dish he had just prepared.
Pretty much nothing changed in the eighties, nineties and now the noughties. Chefs and cooks came and went. From the irritating Worrall Thompson to the extravagant use of language of Ramsey; from the homely Delia to the sensuous Nigella, they drifted into our homes, and bookshelves, and away again.
In four years, Come Dine With Me has moved on from being one of those programmes students enjoy instead of attending lectures, and indeed has moved on from putting the focus on food.
In a relatively unchanged format, five people, unknown to one another, each host a dinner party on successive days of the week, secretly voting marks out of ten for each other, at the end of the evening’s ‘fun’. The winner, at the end of each week, receives one thousand pounds.
However, the show is now rather less about the food, and more about the social interaction between the contenders, and more vitally, the voiceover style commentary of Dave Lamb.
Opinions are split about Lamb’s contribution. He may be a comedy genius, adding a layer of hilarity that has made the programme compulsive viewing, or he is a smug ‘know-it-all’ whose clever dick comments destroy the warm nature of the show. I pretty much go with the former view.
Much of the appeal may be in the certainty of the format. These days we can be almost certain that the five ‘cooks’ will include, the camp one, the posh one, the aggravating one, the eccentric one, and the normal-ish one (who never wins).
To appeal to the voyeur in viewers, we also get to poke about in each contender’s house, peeping into cupboards and closets, where the quirkiness and individuality of people’s lives can often be displayed.
The show doesn’t really give enough scope for ‘Big Brother’ style show-offs to try and use the few minutes of screen time to audition for ‘fame’. The twenty-four minutes, each day, are tightly, and superbly, edited, to ensure we concentrate on the relationships between the participants, and on any quirks of the individuals. The editing suite loves nothing more than a dish going wrong, and how the moment is, or isn’t, resolved.
A glass of wine spilled on a sofa, a dropped anchovy, or a soufflé that won’t rise, and the camera lingers, whilst Dave Lamb spices up the commentary.
Of course, it is unlikely that any of us would ever have a semi-formal dining experience with the same people over five successive days, unless, of course, you are maitre d’ at The Wolseley. This unusual aspect of closeness to five strangers adds to the possibilities of passing friendship or, alternatively, alienation, and magnifies the campness or poshness, allowing Dave Lamb free rein with the capricious, comedic, discourse.
Naturally, Come Dine With Me will have a shelf life, just like that jar of mixed spices at the back of the cupboard, and we will get fed up with it in time, until it returns in 2015 in a burst of nostalgia, where it will be introduced by Ant & Dec.
Until that day, we can pretend to be interested in the recipes, and the winner of the thousand pounds, whilst sniggering at Dave Lamb’s asides, and wondering why so many people have feather boas at the back of their closets.
As a contestant, Fanny Cradock would have thought she had stumbled into hell on earth. She would have blamed it all on Johnny and written a stiff letter to the Daily Telegraph.
"I’m awarding Fanny a three, because she threw the Yorkshire pudding at me."
remotevision@gmail.com
# posted by Terence : 9:11 PM
Sunday, February 01, 2009
The Chuckle Brothers
Match Of The Day - 31st January 2009It has to be accepted, of course, that the most important issue in sports coverage, is that we see the action. We can't really complain about that these days, with the multitude of camera angles, and the introduction of High Definition (even though HD is not yet used effectively) viewing.
However, it would be handy if sometimes we cut away from the fifth replay of an insignificant corner, when we can hear the crowd's growing excitement at some action happening 'live', whilst at home we continue to muse on Scott Carson missing his punch.
The theme music for Match Of The Day (MOTD) is a bright, cheery, piece of music that is so associated with football that just hearing the opening bars immediately evokes memories of Barry "Just Look At His Face" Davies, Clive Thomas of Treorchy, and Ron Harris 'tackling' Tony Currie whilst simultaneously sending him into the front row of the main stand.
Tricky then, that after that brassy, upbeat intro, we are met with the slightly baleful (these days) face of Gary Lineker. Now I know that we all think of Gary as the second greatest living Englishman behind Stephen Fry, but it is debatable if the former England striker fits into the right sort of format we seek in 2009. Yes, I know it is heresy to write such potential calumny, but listen to Five Live when Danny Baker is running the phone in, and we can see how different it could be. Danny, of course, does not translate to some strands of television. He can become a bit overwhelmed and go a bit 'silly'. However, it is the style of presentation to which I refer.
So, here we are, with Gary, dressed from head to toe in funereal black, and joining him, on the inevitable sofa, BBC Sport's version of the Chuckle Brothers - Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer. One dressed in black and grey; the other in grey and black. We don't need these fellows to wear clown costumes, but couldn't someone from 'Wardrobe' find them something a little less... downbeat?
I have no doubt that as another season approaches, each Head of Sports Broadcasting (these men - it is always men - must have their job roles in capital letters) ponders on how they can edge away from the 'suited presenter/three ex-professionals in a line' format, but come September, there's Ruud Gullit and Mark 'Lawro' Lawrenson back with us once more.
There have been minor attempts at change. However, plonking Andy Townshend and Ally McCoist on the edge of the pitch with a little occasional table was always doomed to fail, as they increasingly desperately shoved their ear pieces ever further into their ear canals in a hopeless attempt to pick up whatever Gaby/Steve/whoever is saying back up in the tiny conservatory balanced precariously above the corner flag.
This week, on MOTD, they got the basics right. We saw all the goals, and the major action with its attendant talking points.
First up was Manchester United at home to Everton. The team with multiple strikers against the team with none.
Not much happened, which was handy as I was transfixed by the orange nature of Cristiano Ronaldo's face, and the head wear adopted by Carlos Tevez, which suggested he had made a quick stop at Claire's Accessories before turning up at Old Trafford.
After a routine 1-0 win, we were reminded of the animosity that Sir Alex Ferguson still holds for the BBC as he refuses all interviews, and up to the plate stepped Mike Phelan, the assistant manager, to say the sort of meaningless nothingness that club representatives say every week.
So the rest of the show drifted past, with Wigan in their highlighter pen coloured yellow shirts erecting some sort of force field in front of their goal, and later, the increasingly dire defending of Portsmouth, once again sending them to defeat.
Fans of WWF would have enjoyed the mass bundle at Stoke, which followed Rory Delap's grouchy 'tackle' on Shaun Wright-Phillips.
Throughout, we returned to the laconic Gary, and the gloom riddled features of Alan H. and Alan S.
It feels as if they are self censoring as they comment, as if in fear of upsetting the great, the good, and the not so good, amongst their former playing and managerial colleagues, which is why we maybe need a change.
A presenter who loves football, but who does not owe his living to it, and after-match commentators who will say what we are thinking, or better still, bring us insights that we may have missed, without checking whether they may upset the power brokers and 'controllers' of the greatest game that ever there was.
Until then, the 'Sofa Men' will continue to tell us that 'the lad will be disappointed with that shot' as the expensive import balloons the ball out of the ground, and 'that may have been a touch over the top' as the midfield general scythes a tackle at the hapless forward's midriff.
Give them a red card, and bring football television coverage forward by a century or two.
# posted by Terence : 8:12 PM
