Strictly Make It Stop
Strictly Come Dancing is awful, isn't it?
Now, before we go any further don't start dragging the X Factor into this, that's a whole different story, the two are mutually exclusive and proving one is worse does not make the other better. It's like when I point out what a dreary, pointless pastime Rugby is I'll always get people saying "Ah, but footballers fall over really easy..." blah, blah, blah. Doesn't matter, we're strictly dealing with Strictly.
Even the name doesn't make any sense: "Strictly Come Dancing", a portmanteau of "Strictly Ballroom" and "Come Dancing", two institutions which in their own right were no longer relevant, thrown together to create something all together more ridiculous. I didn't watch it for the first few years, it held no appeal, but by cultural osmosis (i.e. living with someone who does like it) I now find myself sitting through it every week, and during that time my mind completely switches off. I first noticed this during the last season where Jake Wood danced a Tango (or was it an Argentinian Tango? Is there a difference? The show seems to draw a distinction). Whilst the judges enthused and the studio audience whooped their delight I realised that, though I had watched the dance, though I had sat there and observed the performance, I could not remember a single thing about it. Somehow my eyes and brain had become disconnected. And then I realised this happens for every dance.
Why the fuck am I watching a show about dancing when the dancing isn't registering?
I thought things might improve when Forsyth had gone, seeing as I actually like Claudia Winkleman, yet now it's worse as every week I see her spirit being slowly crushed by having to support this cast-iron albatross of a show, playing the "Ant" to Tess Daley's "Dec". God Tess Daley is awful, a patronising professional Northerner with the screen persona of a care worker spooning gruel into the dribbling maw of a catatonic mental patient.
Several years ago, in my final year at University, some friends and I had the wonderful idea to hire a Minibus and drive across to Blackpool. At some point during the day, fuelled by cheap lager, we ended up in the Tower Ballroom watching a small but cheerful bunch of septuagenarians dancing to a man in a sequinned jacket playing a Wurlitzer. It was magical, like some secret society which we were observing, everyone knew the rules, how to spin, when to turn, what to do with their arms, flowing and undulating like a blue-rinsed mountain brook. This memory, this respect I had at the time would, I thought, open me up to the wonder of dancing that Strictly could offer, but instead I got Gregg Wallace dancing the Charleston.
Maybe it's the Strictly music that appeals? Nope, not even that. After a while the same honking horns and overwrought vocals all merge into one. Maybe the judges comments? Again, nope. Same thing every week, the two pantomime dames on either end of the panel, an interchangeable female and Len Goodman shouting "Se-VEN!". It's testament to how banal this programme is that "Seven" has become a catchphrase. Actually, scratch that, every show ends up with the awful, awful, "Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep Dancing!". Seriously? That's the best we could come up with?
And yet it doesn't matter. Nothing about this programme matters, it is so myred in formula that people are now numb to it. So we get to the situation where, like myself, we just turn it on and disengage our brains while we're bombarded with sequins and cleavage, regaining consciousness briefly enough to register how bizarre Darcey Bussell's nostrils are. Once, toward the end of last season, I decided to catch up on an episode we'd recorded so I fast-forwarded through the bits that I wasn't interested in, it turns out this constituted excruciating comedy sketches that precede each dance, the dancing, the judges’ comments, the post dance interviews, the judges holding up their numbered table tennis bats and the final scores, i.e. everything. In fact I realised I could just check Twitter and find out who'd gone and who'd won. Turns out Caroline Flack won and her prize was to move from presenting the X Factor on ITV2 to ITV1.
Strictly bollocks.
Now, before we go any further don't start dragging the X Factor into this, that's a whole different story, the two are mutually exclusive and proving one is worse does not make the other better. It's like when I point out what a dreary, pointless pastime Rugby is I'll always get people saying "Ah, but footballers fall over really easy..." blah, blah, blah. Doesn't matter, we're strictly dealing with Strictly.
Even the name doesn't make any sense: "Strictly Come Dancing", a portmanteau of "Strictly Ballroom" and "Come Dancing", two institutions which in their own right were no longer relevant, thrown together to create something all together more ridiculous. I didn't watch it for the first few years, it held no appeal, but by cultural osmosis (i.e. living with someone who does like it) I now find myself sitting through it every week, and during that time my mind completely switches off. I first noticed this during the last season where Jake Wood danced a Tango (or was it an Argentinian Tango? Is there a difference? The show seems to draw a distinction). Whilst the judges enthused and the studio audience whooped their delight I realised that, though I had watched the dance, though I had sat there and observed the performance, I could not remember a single thing about it. Somehow my eyes and brain had become disconnected. And then I realised this happens for every dance.
Why the fuck am I watching a show about dancing when the dancing isn't registering?
I thought things might improve when Forsyth had gone, seeing as I actually like Claudia Winkleman, yet now it's worse as every week I see her spirit being slowly crushed by having to support this cast-iron albatross of a show, playing the "Ant" to Tess Daley's "Dec". God Tess Daley is awful, a patronising professional Northerner with the screen persona of a care worker spooning gruel into the dribbling maw of a catatonic mental patient.
Several years ago, in my final year at University, some friends and I had the wonderful idea to hire a Minibus and drive across to Blackpool. At some point during the day, fuelled by cheap lager, we ended up in the Tower Ballroom watching a small but cheerful bunch of septuagenarians dancing to a man in a sequinned jacket playing a Wurlitzer. It was magical, like some secret society which we were observing, everyone knew the rules, how to spin, when to turn, what to do with their arms, flowing and undulating like a blue-rinsed mountain brook. This memory, this respect I had at the time would, I thought, open me up to the wonder of dancing that Strictly could offer, but instead I got Gregg Wallace dancing the Charleston.
Maybe it's the Strictly music that appeals? Nope, not even that. After a while the same honking horns and overwrought vocals all merge into one. Maybe the judges comments? Again, nope. Same thing every week, the two pantomime dames on either end of the panel, an interchangeable female and Len Goodman shouting "Se-VEN!". It's testament to how banal this programme is that "Seven" has become a catchphrase. Actually, scratch that, every show ends up with the awful, awful, "Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep Dancing!". Seriously? That's the best we could come up with?
And yet it doesn't matter. Nothing about this programme matters, it is so myred in formula that people are now numb to it. So we get to the situation where, like myself, we just turn it on and disengage our brains while we're bombarded with sequins and cleavage, regaining consciousness briefly enough to register how bizarre Darcey Bussell's nostrils are. Once, toward the end of last season, I decided to catch up on an episode we'd recorded so I fast-forwarded through the bits that I wasn't interested in, it turns out this constituted excruciating comedy sketches that precede each dance, the dancing, the judges’ comments, the post dance interviews, the judges holding up their numbered table tennis bats and the final scores, i.e. everything. In fact I realised I could just check Twitter and find out who'd gone and who'd won. Turns out Caroline Flack won and her prize was to move from presenting the X Factor on ITV2 to ITV1.
Strictly bollocks.
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