Author Archives: Ian Watson

IAN WATSON. THIS WEEKS REALITY

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The Voice ReviewIt’s getting to that time isn’t it? Our reality TV avalanche is thundering along merrily, wiping all before it away like a spitty hankie on an ice cream covered toddler.
The problem is… like that toddler, we were enjoying that ice cream and having it replaced with parental gob whether we want it or not can be a bit distressing.

I don’t watch TOWIE, or MIC or GS because, well, I just can’t. It’s a physical reaction like when my sphincter tries to run up inside my body and hide behind my kidneys when I watch Embarrassing Bodies. My reaction to watching the semi-real but still nut-crushingly mundane lives of ‘some people’ gets me so angry I nearly ate my own chin when a BAFTA- that’s right a f*****G BAFTA! Was handed out to these vacant lots in the name of entertainment.

I can’t live with that level of anger in my life. That’s how wars start.

I can watch EB, albeit lying like an ironing board and peering through the fingers of one hand, because it’s incredibly educational, gripping and necessary. A frank program about medical taboos is long overdue and I applaud the makers and those brave enough to get their hair and make-up done and wave at the kids down the lens just before it pulls focus on their knotted labia. I can just imagine the conversation when they return to an angry child who believed a close-up of their mothers cervix was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

I can of course, watch talent shows.

Presently we have, BGT, The Voice and The Apprentice. I’m putting the latter in the list of ‘talent’ because it stopped being anything to do with serious business about eight seconds after the first candidate spoke at the start of series two. Now it’s all about who can be the biggest moron and prove, beyond any doubt at all, that the ability to proclaim yourself almost god-like is so easy even a halfwit who can’t do basic sums can do it as long as they’re wearing a suit.
They talk ‘Branson’, they walk ‘Branston’ (thick, made almost entirely of vegetable matter and, in Luisa’s case, goes down well after a little pork).

So that leaves us with BGT and The Voice- what a choice (poetry comes as standard).

We’re about to head into the live finals of both. Jessie’s hair is about to disappear like the promises of stardom she doles out to everyone and Uncle Tom is, perhaps, finally going to stand up, point at Will and shout, “What is he saying?”
For a while it looked like some musical theatre bods were actually going to get the chance to be voted for by real people but a quiet word on Will’s ear had him yanking the handbrake and sending the clearly better Liam home and illustrating that the only keys he understands are on the keyboard of his ‘autotune-o-gram’ [dope edition].

Over on BGT, or Simon’s private fluffer auditions as it’s veered dangerously towards becoming, we witnessed a scene that took me back to my days of working at a Blackpool nightclub in the 80s. Loads of badly dressed under-aged hopefuls waiting hours just to be sent home… and a couple of drag queens.

So all in all, the search for actual talent seems pretty hopeless. Getting through on BGT is easier than beating Mr. Chips off ‘Catchphrase’ at poker… “Hmmm, he seems to be sitting on a toilet and wearing a crown… I think I’ll fold!” And getting through to the finals of The Voice is easy as long as you sound like you smoke thirty a day and desperately want to be Ed Sheeran or Adelle and have never even hummed the melody to “I Dreamed a Dream.”

BGT live finals start tonight and run every night till it’s all over and Sico Productions can buy another country but we’ll have to endure another 7 shows spread over several weeks before we get to see who will be crowned winner of The Voice and guaranteed anonymity forever more. Could you pick Leanne Mitchel out of a crowd? Nope, me neither.

Oh well, if it all ends up being one big vacuous cloud of hype in the name of ratings at least they’ll be able to walk into any lead role in the West End, aint that right Jessie?

The Voice Week 7

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LIVE, LIVE, LIVE! The BBC love a bit of LIVE don’t they? They spend so much money sending people out to report LIVE for no reason whatsoever because they just can’t get enough of it. Some poor, soaked and miserable journo has to stand outside the houses of parliament to talk about a politician who’s not only not there but is watching at home from the comfort of his own gimp mask.

Why? We know what the houses of parliament look like! Just do it from the studio and save our license fee a few quid.

“NO!” Auntie Beeb would reply, “We are the BBC and we do live TV, reasons are for commercial channels!”
Well, you’d think they’d at least be good at it, wouldn’t you?

At the very least they’d drop this ridiculous pretense of , “what a great show last night was” for the results show even though EVERYONE knows it was filmed on the Saturday. They get away with it on Strictly because… well it’s Strictly, but this is meant to be a slicker than snot, smoother than the cream in Simon Cowell’s Twinkie, all singing (no dancing) flagship live broadcast to put them on top of the global talent show pile.

Will someone please just admit it’s filmed right after the live show and be done with it? These contestants are already way out of their league just by being asked their name so expecting them to remember to lie to 11 million people is asking too much, and all that , “err… yeah, last night was great! (wink, wink)” rubbish makes it look like Wayne’s World.

Last week’s Live final was roundly criticized by pretty much everyone with a keyboard. The production was stilted and awkward. There was more dead air than a séance and the whole thing had the feel of a corporate training weekend where unwilling participants who, would rather be at the bar, have to stand up and ‘tell the group’ about themselves.

This week they responded by pulling it off with a touch more professionalism but it was still way short of the mark.

Now, I’m no fashionista, as anyone who has ever seen me will contest. In fact I get snotty looks from the old ladies in ‘Age Concern’ and was actually paid to leave Abercrombie & Fitch to spare the screams of the models that work there, in spite of it being too dark for even ‘Most Haunted’ to see anything. But I have to ask what was going on with the wardrobe department?

Billy Piping’s jacket was yet another variation on the same thing he’s never seen without. He looked like and extra from TRON and I’m sure he’s flogging them out of a van in the BBC car park. Jessie J was in her grandma’s pajamas and feint uncle Tom was still waiting for someone to colour him in.

Even the contestants weren’t spared the horrors of ‘S.Wonder &Co’ (“ We guess- You dress”) in the dressing rooms.

Poor Ruth- Ann was thrown into a neon metallic blue jump suit from 1976. I couldn’t help wondering if Sheila Fergusson of the 3 degrees wasn’t at home rummaging through an old suitcase with the sneaking suspicion something was missing. She didn’t sing well, but then again she never does. It’s a bit much of the live finals of a talent contest when you get a standing ovation from your coach for, “Singing a whole song, in tune, and smiling!” Jeepers! Someone book this genius a stadium tour immediately!
Vince Kidd, whose weight was quadrupled to 8 stone when he put his chains on came out looking like he was going to sing, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and Toni looked… well, to be honest I have no idea what she was wearing because I’m constantly mesmerized by her head whenever she’s on stage. She has a very strong bone structure too, which doesn’t help because for an attractive woman, and she’s certainly
attractive, she can come over a bit ‘Zelda’. If there’s one glaring wardrobe requirement in the whole production it must be to put something on her head, surely, if not just for the cameraman’s sake. The lens flare from her scalp must be like filming a solar eclipse if she stands in the wrong place.

Holly looked very nice, but then she’s clearly some kind of angel and incapable of being anything but heavenly, and she was a little more relaxed about the in-betweeny bits where she has to draw blood from the stony judges and overly emotional contestants.

This week she stopped short of adopting everyone who got rejected and blubbing into her cleavage. She even opened with the classic, “What will you be looking for tonight Will?” And I half expected him to reply,

“Somewhere to plug my iphone charger in.”

I suspect this subtle shift in attitude came about because someone high up in the BBC had been reading the reviews and sent a memo.

The memo should have been along the lines of, ‘Stop being so nice and giving everyone who manages to crawl on stage a standing ovation. We paid a fortune for those spinning chairs, and your opinions- use them both with greater effect!’

But what it probably said was something far more vague and open to interpretation because what we actually got was judges- sorry, ‘coaches’, avoiding anything like real criticism or, for that matter, a language spoken by humans and swapped some of their vacuous praise for just babbling like a Tasmanian devil, mid-exorcism.

At one point Will had to correct Jessie for saying’ boom’ when, of course, it should have been ‘zoom’ (everyone knows that, right?) and I seriously suspected they’d been sharing a back-stage ‘doobie’ with Derren Brown and Paul McKenna. He even threw a ‘knock- knock’ joke in there which nobody but him was aware of and so it took about half an hour and no small amount of TV agony to get to the end of and even THAT got a standing ovation from Danny!

It was to young Aleks who had just crooned his way onto the next round. Again, the praise was way over the top and everyone said that it had effectively ended Michael Buble’s career. Really? Some kid built like a finger puppet can come on and blow his way through one song, and suddenly the biggest selling male artist on the planet is yesterdays chips?

I suspect a slightly stronger memo might be in order.

All in all, there was some redeeming quality. Max was fantastic and so was Bo, who Danny was extremely proud of choosing for his team, (yes, well done Danny, you’re an excellent Bo Selector.. sorry) and the right people went home so all the frailty of the BBC’s dedication to bad live TV was forgotten for another week… well, not really, because The Voice was followed by ‘Planet Earth Live’ which was just about the most pointlessly live thing I’ve seen since Frankenstein’s Monster.

Oh well, see you next week and remember, if you can stomach it, and if I can get to a TV on time, you can follow my live tweets @MrIanWatson during next week’s show.

The Voice. Week 6. The live shows

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Finally! We can drop the whole, “We’re not the X-Factor. Honestly!” nonsense and get down to a reality sing-off that resembles reality. The good old BBC decided, of course, to do things a little differently though by just having two teams battle it out instead of all four.
Why might this be, I wonder? Surely, in the interests of fairness, everyone sings and everyone gets compared to everyone else- right?

I suppose the Beeb would argue that having twenty acts (I refuse to call them ‘voices’- you know why) singing a song each would make too long a show but Th’exfactor manages it with sixteen and they have commercial breaks to contend with.

It just seemed a bit odd.

This format basically allows all those poor deluded punters who literally can’t watch a program without picking up their phone, to vote four times as often. Think about it. What if your favorite wasn’t on tonight? Do you wait for them to appear next week and just try to enjoy this week’s show without a recorded voice thanking you on one ear? Hell no! You gotta vote, right? Pick another favorite and vote for them- go on! And remember, it’s just within each team so you’d better vote twice!
And what about the acts themselves? The weaker ones have had their chances of survival quadrupled from 20-1 to 5-1 in a stroke!

“Only two teams will compete this week and someone from each team is going home.” No matter what, so the weakest from a strong team will go even though they’re better than someone from another team who stays.

On ITV it’s a free-for-all and the act with the least votes goes home. It doesn’t matter which team they’re on.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the format but it STILL feels like they’re making rules up just to be different.

This week we had Team Will against Team Tom. Team Jones would have been a better name but that would have meant they were against Team ‘i.am’ and I think there’s already a pet food manufacturer sponsoring a bunch of tabbies with that name and we all know what a nightmare that can be. Just ask ‘Rhythmix- sorry, Little Mix.’

I’d hate to see a gang of highly trained pets who jump through hoops and roll over for treats having their name taken away because of… a load of cats.

Now don’t get me wrong. I was relieved that the wise old general public were allowed to take the wheel at last and do the right thing for a change. Until, that is. I saw Joelle standing there in the last two next to Sophie while Tyler returned, unchallenged, to his wind tunnel. At least she went through, and quite right too, but in the other camp we were left with cartoon Sam and Mattsuleen (I’m seeing them as one person now- it’s easier to think like uncle Tom that way) who are probably chuffed to get through in spite of missing out on this week’s goat sacrifice back at the ‘henge’.

Neither are as good as Sophie, I think, and yet this weird ‘team’ setup means they didn’t compete with her anyway.

The low number of songs meant a lot of filling was needed and Holly, bless her, try as she might to get anything like a decent conversation going, ended up wilting under the strain and held the microphone so low while Adam Isaac droned on about his ‘chipped bone’ in his arm that she almost gave him curvature of the spine to go with it.

It was sweet to see Tom filling up when he had to dismiss Sam but it was ok because Sam had been consoled by the overly emotional Holly just long enough for him to curb his bitterness in a final confusing flourish of, “I’m really gutted… but happy too.” Which was his way of telling Tom he’d had enough time in the arms of his first non-inflatable blonde to reflect on his dismissal and will, in fact, forgive him and not nail his quiff to the gates of Castle Sexbomb (Motto: Lie Bach and Prestatyn) after all.

Tom managed to pull his hard-assed, “look, boyo, it’s life. Someone’s gotta go and I’m afraid it’s you” act out of the bag in between a mere dozen ways to describe how ‘hard a decision’ it was, but Will bottled it!

When it came time to ditch Sophie he crumbled and basically promised her a recording contract regardless of being told, in no uncertain terms, that she was about as popular with the British public as Nick Griffin. (Not true of course, she’s a lovely and talented young lady with a bright future, I’m sure).

“Don’t worry, me and Dante and all my team will give you whatever you want.” He said, and I’m pretty sure he meant it so fair play to Willy, but as the weeks roll on and eliminations of more talented people than poor Sophie pile up, his other ‘team’ are going to wish he’d be a lot less sweet and a lot more ‘Sugar’ and just fire people without promising them their own pod with the ‘Peas’.
In the end, of course, the public did mostly the right thing and the eventual winners, Jaz and Ruth went through.

Next week it’s Danny against Jessie where I imagine the other Ruth will be given a series of golden envelopes and told to pick a key to avoid, Vince will be backed by the rest of the Lost Boys and Becky Hill will threaten to glass everyone in the country if they don’t vote for her.
Should be fun! Can’t wait.

I will be tweeting, live, through next week’s shows so join me @elywhitley… if you dare.

The Voice. week 5- BATTLES!

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Before you ask, yes I have watched both ‘battle rounds’ of The Voice this weekend. Anyone who was on twitter, and if you weren’t then it’s probably time to pull the red chord and get the nurse to tell you what it is, will know that I was tweeting my bitchy little bum off through both shows.
Even though I watched all forty acts battle it out, I was painfully aware of the utter nonsense of this ‘battle’ format by the end of the third bout.


Let’s get it said shall we? Whoever designed this part of the show needs sending to ITV, or Channel five at a push, to design and extreme version of ‘Celebrity Naked Big Brother in the Jungle with Robots and Fire’ and never be allowed near a singing competition again- ANY singing competition!
Even the X-Factor wouldn’t have allowed this pointless, counter-intuitive, and self destructive idea off someone’s drool-laminated iPad and into the production offices.
The reasons why this is about as far removed from finding , “The Voice” (a title I’m having to check is still in place with every passing minute) as the This Morning prize question is from Mastermind are almost too many to list but let’s just look at it in simple terms.
We’re looking for ‘The Voice’, right? OK, so, regardless of any mistakes made getting to this point let’s at least move forward with that premise in mind.
We’ve got four different ‘coaches’ from different genres and generations of music- ok, well then it makes sense that each should have a team that represents their music.
Jessie J can represent independent modern funky girls. Danny, the indie singer-songwriter boys. Will.D.Beast can coach hip-hop and R’n’B types, and Tom can handle the big divas and the crooners. If we really HAVE to have some kind of battle then it should at least be team against team, Like ‘Top Trumps’, right?
No? Well it was just a thought. It took me about as long as it took to type and it’s still miles better than what we ended up with.
Ok, how about this. We have 40 acts- can’t call them voices because there are two pairs in there- don’t ask! How about we pick the best twenty to go through?
I know it sounds simple but that’s logic for you. It may be almost insultingly obvious, like giving a team talk that goes, “How about we try and win this game?” Or Maximus from ‘Gladiator’ ditching his, “you’re already dead” battle cry in favour of , “Kill those guys and try not to get killed yourselves, Ok? Now off you go!” But I really feel someone at the BBC needs sitting down with an adult and talking to.
You’d think that taking the best singers on to the next stage would be the starting point of any elimination round- kind of the whole point in fact.
Not on The Voice! Oh no sir! I bet Kerry Ellis, Nathan James and all the other professionals with their dignity still safely intact must have watched this weekend’s shows with enormous relief. Like seeing a news report that the train they missed that morning has been held up by Mexican bandits and the passengers have been forced to suck smoothies through the bandits’ underpants at gunpoint.
There were times I couldn’t look and others I couldn’t listen either.
Some will argue that it makes good TV. They’d be right. I was gripped but for the wrong reasons. Embarrassing Bodies is un-missable TV but they don’t call it , “The Arse” and claim it’s a search for the Britain’s best colon do they?
It was meant to be filled with a kind of ‘rumble in the jungle’ tension. A ‘sing in the ring’ if you will. It was more like ‘shout through a bout’ in some cases and the whole thing became more like Thunderdome. I half expected Tina Turner to be Tom Jones’ assistant and start calling him ‘raggedy man’ while the crowd chant for blood and throw weapons in to mix it up a bit.
Instead we got Cery’s ‘one-yard-stare’ Matthews for Tom, and Dante Santiago for Will who said that the first two girls, Joelle and Jenny were two of the ‘illest’ singers in the competition. Before they could misunderstand him and go for a lie down in spite of feeling fine, he went on to shoot himself straight in the foot by then saying he wanted them to be, “simple, natural… like Michael Jackson” at which point you could hear people spitting tea over themselves on every street in the country.
Being incredibly cool myself and, in fact, being so far down with the kids I need a CRB check whenever I leave the house, I knew exactly what Dante meant and he was right. These two girls were two of the best singers in the whole thing and yet here we were, choosing to get rid of one of them because…. Because? Anyone?
“You two are so similar, I only have room for one of your kind in my team.” Danny told Bill and Max before they went on.
It’s not Noah’s Ark Danny! You don’t have to collect one of every species mate!
Bill, like Jenny before him, was sent home in the sure knowledge that someone far less talented than him would go through. I agree that Max was the better out of the two but that should never have been the choice in the first place. Like Danny said, “The UK are thinking I’m an idiot for putting these two together” but it’s worse than that. He had no choice.
This format forced him to put them together because he could hardly have put the five weakest against the five strongest to be sacrificed in the ring could he?
This format is responsible for Bill going home and Sam Buttery (real name- honest) going through. Sam, the love child of Timmy Mallet and Dom Jolly, is clearly a lovely guy. I’d have him round for tea any day, but ‘The Voice’ he aint.
There were far too many examples of good singers going home. Lindsey Butler went home and so did Vince Freeman while Ruth-Ann ‘it’s-in-there-somewhere’ St. Luce and Matt ‘the Wookie’ and Suleen went through to the live finals where their ‘stories’ will almost certainly be wrung dry in shameless vote-garnering just like every other shallow, American-style reality show.
It’s just ridiculous!
When I heard about ‘The Voice’ I was expecting something from the BBC of the calibre of Strictly Come Dancing. Filled with genuine judgment of actual ability and packed with integrity where, when the public get a little carried away with voting for a Sergeant, or a Widdecombe, they’re told by Len Goodman- now come on folks, enough of this silliness, this is a serious competition!
Watching ‘The Voice’ this weekend was more like watching Robot Wars than Strictly. Does anyone have Len’s number by any chance? It’s not too late.

 

 

 

The Voice. Week 4

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So the ‘blind’ auditions are over at last. They may have been about as blind as the ‘all-seeing-eye’ but more on that later.

I want to get the good stuff out of the way before I rant about the auditions because, regardless of what may or may not be wrong with it, we’ve been given the chance to see some real quality.


The best bits of this week’s show were people like the young Ruth Brown, a 19 year-old with a voice like Gloria Gaynor-meets-Mischa B. Lindsey Butler, the 41 year-old who sang like I, personally, really wanted to hear her sing- beautifully and with genuine tone, depth and character. There was Becky Hill. A great voice but with ‘trouble’ written all over her face. I can see her storming out more often than Cher Lloyd with the trots.

Finally- and I do mean finally, we had the wonder of Jazz Elington. So good, just so very, very good indeed. I cried, I packed and I left for the nearest HMV where I have decided to camp until he wins the competition and releases his first album so I can get it as soon as humanly possible. He sounded like the best bits of Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross and maybe a little Sam Cooke rolled onto one sweet sound and poured over my soul. Jazz is a Gospel singer and a Christian, I am neither, but I do have a real love of black church music and Mr. Elington ticked boxes I never knew I had.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if we could have had Jazz presented to us in another format? One that doesn’t treat us all like idiots and then preach, louder than Jazz ever has I imagine, about how virtuous it is.

For those of you who haven’t spotted it, my rant has begun.

I’ll come onto the ‘Ellington Miracle’ as it’s bound to be tagged but let me first point out what appears to be something of an agenda by The Voice and, therefore, the BBC against people from a musical theatre background.

I’m biased- I know that. I’m connected to MT closely enough to want good things for it albeit not as a performer myself. But even someone who has never known the joy of a twelve quid bottle of warm beer will have spotted a pattern in these shows.

How many times have we seen someone labeled ‘West End’ like it was leprosy? Poor Ben Lake was, like those before him, built up to be knocked down. He sang well and took his rejection with the humility and grace of a real professional but when Indie and Pixie, a pair of giggling girls that looked like ‘Two Shoes’ had met the devil at some crossroads and swapped their talent for looks, came on and sang badly, and I mean badly, they were rewarded by ALL FOUR coaches!

I’m starting to think that the secret formula to success on this show is to be as far removed from ‘The West End’ as possible.

Next year I’m going to apply and say, “I’ve never heard of musicals, or even theatres… In fact my entire family were killed by Andrew Lloyd Webber on roller skates and my musical background is… East… Beginning!” Then go on with eight mates or so and sing a black-eyed-peas medley wearing lycra leggings, a black blazer and shirt and a bouffant hairdo. That should cover it.

Will.I.Wont.I said ‘dope’ I said, ‘no shit!’ Danny said he was waiting for something really unusual to hit him, I looked for my penguin wrapped in tinsel and took aim.

It’s ok, crap gets through, I can live with that. It’s a TV show, not open heart surgery. I should relax and let bygones be bygones. It’s just entertainment isn’t it? Well, not according to the BBC.
Fast forward to the arrival, on stage, of Daniel Walker. Who’s he? He’s the poor sap with the dreads and the pregnant wife who went on before Jazz and never stood a chance.

Here’s why.

Everyone has their ten and Bill.a.rickey still has one spot to fill. There are two people left to perform and, even if this were completely open and fair with no set-up involved there would be only two options:

Daniel doesn’t get picked so we see who is last. Or, Daniel gets picked and Jazz gets told, “sorry mate but everyone’s got ten now so there’s no point in you going on- thanks for coming down though… good luck with the baby and all that.”

It was NEVER going to happen was it? The pure maths of the situation meat that Daniel was never going to be picked or we’d have sat through Jazz singing to four chair backs for no reason at all.
Even worse. Before Jazz even came on he should have been told that he was picked regardless of how he sang because there’s one space that needs to be filled and he’s the only choice. The fact that he was the best thing on the entire series was academic. They could have wheeled a dead budgie in a shoe box onto the stage and Will.a.mena would have had to pick it, so why did he try and convince us his mum is residing somewhere in his pancreas with all that, ‘listen to your gut everyone’ nonsense?

It gets worse- a Lot worse. You know those toe-curling moments when Simon Cowell holds up an arm, like Caesar at the Colosseum, and stops the music about two seconds into a song on BGT? The audience is in awe of his foresight as he asks, ‘what other song have you brought?” and the poor cow on the stage has to keep reminding herself not to say, “the one you told me to Simon” and we’re all supposed to think it’s a natural situation. Don’t you just hate that?

When Jazz finished and Jessie asked, out of the blue of course, “Can I just hear you sing?” I was thinking, ‘that’s a bit of an odd thing to ask but he was very good.’ And I imagined the producers screaming about schedules and the live band looking at each other in disbelief and there being a polite but definite ‘no’.

Instead the producer probably counted the band in with a gentle, “’ordinary people’, just like we rehearsed, in three two, one…” and it all just miraculously happened about as naturally as Gary Barlow turning up at the fake door of the fake house in the studio of Michael Buble’s Christmas special and everyone acting all surprised. “Look everyone, it’s Gary Barlow! Who knew?”

The difference is that Mickey Bubbles did it with a twinkle in his eye and a tongue in his cheek and even Simon Cowell doesn’t expect us to believe his little charade any more. The BBC tried to convince us that we were all witnessing some kind of spiritual awakening for Steel.I.Span and the coming of the new messiah for everyone else.

What were the chances that the VERY LAST competitor would turn out to be such a great climax to the auditions? Or that he’d be able to telepathically transmit his own version of ‘Ordinary people’ into the minds of a live band with no warning whatsoever? It’s almost as if the producers had seen every competitor sing before these auditions- oh they have, and arranged this from the very beginning! Surely not- this is the BBC!

This entire show has been a smoke screen. People are told what to sing, set up to fail and thrown to the lions- they must be hoping Satan Cowell will jump ship and join the BBC if they do things his way.
Afterwards every judge said Jazz was amazing- and he was. They all bleated about how they wish they could have him in their team because he’s really something amazing. Shame for the 39- sorry 41 as there are two couples in it, previous contestants who sat and saw all the promises of world domination and certain victory dissolve to be replaced with the sad understanding that they were just the warm up act for the Jazz Ellington show. Oh well.

Next week we have face-to-face battles in a stage designed around a boxing ring. Fists may fly, faces will be covered in spittle, grills will be got ‘all up in’.

Very cultured- makes BGT look like the Royal Ballet.

 

The Voice: week 3

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Do you ever get the feeling that the world has cocked a formerly deaf ear in your direction? I’m starting to suspect that those savvy telly types at The Voice are listening to tutting head shakers like me and chucking in a few tweaks, albeit too late.
Week three has been something of a turning point.


Sure, we had the usual back story nonsense that destroys all the credibility of the show. We learned, for no reason whatsoever, that Cassius Henry’s kid brother had passed away and that Kate Read’s mother was an internally beautiful inspiration to her. We also saw that young Bill Downs was going to have to postpone his wedding day if he got through- something his fiancé seemed more than happy about, presumably hoping that he’s grow out of his addiction to leather wrist bands before the big day. Most annoying of all was the backstory they pre-climaxed the show with. Poor Tyler James, erstwhile BFF of the talented but troubled junkie Amy Winehouse, made it quite clear that this was for him now, for himself, for his confidence as a singer and songwriter in his own right. Of course we only heard this from Tyler because we couldn’t see his wind-tunnel features thanks to the barrage of Amy pics they decided to thrust at us. You could almost hear the producers screaming, “Look! Amy friggin’ Winehouse everyone!”
Tyler sang about as well as anyone nailed to a plank can be expected to and, once he’d finished waving his little arms about like a dreaming grasshopper, Billiam thanked him for hitting that last note in a falsetto voice because Tom had dropped the word ‘falsetto’ into an earlier comment and it has become the word of the day- it’s all very technical I’m sure.
We also had plenty of clumsy prodding from the voices in the heads of these judges- sorry, ‘coaches,’ like when Cassius, a former TOTP performer, was instantly asked by Bill.y.boy. “What’s been your big, music career… move… to date?” Funny he didn’t ask that of Hanna the cheerleader or Jay the pizza guy isn’t it?
This week, though, there was a lot more for me to enjoy. The coaches were on top form. Any one of them could easily replace the entire panel on BGT and it would constitute a personality upgrade. In the opening credits Tom said, “I wish I had eyes on the back of my head,” and I couldn’t help thinking, “one more nip and tuck session Boyo and you probably will!” Jessie was on fire and so was Will.E.Wonka. Even Danny made me laugh.
I should really temper all this adoration though by saying that being entertaining isn’t really enough for a show of this calibre.
What I’d also like is some insight into the experience and knowledge of these ‘international music gods’ beyond shouting ‘Pick Me!’ and throwing spit bombs across the classroom at the others. This week I thought the elder statesman of the panel gave the most useful critiques which surprised me because I thought he was only there for the sex and only even noticed there was someone singing when they got loud enough to be picked up by his ear trumpet. He told Leanne Mitchel she had a lot of ‘timber’ in her voice which I’m almost certain isn’t Welsh for ‘your singing gives me wood’. He also told Hanna she didn’t ‘over do it’ and advised Bill to work on going in and out of falsetto (take notes everyone). I know it’s not much but at least it’s singing-based commentary from someone who should know.
Elsewhere, Jessie Jay told poor Ruth that there are people who can sing and then there are those who, like her, can ‘SENG!’ Which I can only guess means ‘miss every SENGle note!’ Will.E.Warmer had to explainhis laughter as not being at ‘the girl’ but at ‘Jessie’s state right now’ and I, like him, have no idea what that means.
Other parts of this week’s show were, to be fair, exactly what it claims to be about.
Joelle Moses was outstanding. Alison Brown wasn’t picked in spite of being a MOBO award winner back in 98 and Cris Grixti was able to just come out and sing without his appearance clouding anyone’s judgment. He wasn’t picked but it wasn’t because of his height or his passing resemblance to John Belushi and that, surely, is the point of ‘The Voice’.
I do still, however, have my reservations about this format.
They have decided that each coach will pick ten people for their team and that they must do this at the time they hear them sing. I can see why they would want to do anything if it meant they were seen as different to other talent shows but it just seems to be making life difficult for no reason.
Judges are becoming increasingly hamstrung, forced to hold off picking someone today for fear they may have no room left tomorrow and, vice-versa, as the end of the auditions draws near they might be forced to recruit people much weaker then those let go in earlier rounds because they’re running out of time and need to get to ten.
Imagine a scenario where Danny has seven people and there are only a handful of singers left to see. He’d have to pick everyone- regardless of talent or…what? “Sorry Danny but you only picked eight so you’re not allowed to carry on.” I can’t see that happening.
Even now, in week three, we’re seeing singers being ignored because a coach already has enough like them in their team. The whole thing has become a game of tactics and gambles with Will.I.Ever now trying to force singers onto other teams and, in the case of Alison Brown, everyone saying they were all waiting for Jessie to pick her.
“You’re amazing but I can’t pick you” is no good to a singer who deserves to go through but can’t because the rules have been made up by people more concerned with doing things differently than staying true to the premise of the show. Additional jeopardy and decision-forcing rules work for a game show but that’s meant to be precisely what this isn’t.
The Voice is meant to be a quest for the best singers and, until you’ve heard everyone sing, how can you decide who they are?

 

The Voice. Week 2

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This week we saw The Voice settle into it’s boots a bit more and start to look, to me, more like the program it isn’t, but at least a program I can get into.

If you’re going to review a series then not liking it from day one is like deciding to run the London Marathon dragging a sled full of naked women. You know you’re making life hard for yourself and you can’t get away from it so at least turn around and enjoy the view.

That’s what I’ve had to do and I did it by subtly adjusting my definition of the show’s premise. The Voice isn’t about finding the best voice they can. It’s about finding the best act they can develop from just THE VOICE.

So rather than being all about vocal ability and singing skills, it’s just the same as the other shows like X-Factor or American Idol, but the job of the judges is made harder through handicapping.

I still don’t believe it’s fairer, as so many fans have said, because at the end of the day they’re looking for an act- not a voice. So it just means that when they hear, for instance, Matt and Suleen [the fact that they’ve allowed a couple on to sing together in itself destroys the show’s over-stated premise] they might imagine ‘The Carpenters’. When they turn around and see it’s actually ‘The Carpeted’ they’re already committed.

‘Exactly!” I hear you cry- that’s fairer than someone who looks like Leona Lewis getting the spot light even though they’re as flat as Denise Lewis. Yes, it is, except that doesn’t happen does it? If Leona Lewis, who has a better voice than anyone that’s been picked for any of the teams so far, looked like a bull mastiff  in a wind tunnel then I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be the star she is today. To be a real success in their business you need to look as good as you sound if you’re not absolutely incredible at singing.

Now, before anyone throws SUBO at me (again) I understand that, in those very rare exceptions where the combination of massive popular support, a great (not my opinion) voice and the right channel for milking the crap out of every land line in the country come together to create the perfect money-making storm, looks can be ignored.

We haven’t got a Susan or a Leona on here and, lest we all forget, this is the BBC.

Glasgow grannie, and Playmate of the Month 1965 compared to Ms. Boyle, Barbara came on and sang Wild Horses in a blatant attempt at becoming ‘SUBO II- This time you probably would’ but her voice wasn’t earth shattering- good, great in bits even, but not, as Tom Jones of all people put it, “As strong as Aretha.” What was that Tom? Are there two Arethas out there or have you got a relative called Etha who sings in pubs? I was eating a grape at the time, alone. I could have died Tom! Performing the Heimlich maneuver on yourself is nigh on impossible!

As if to make my point far more succinctly than my ramblings ever could, Barbara was followed by Kerry Ellis.

The star of the West End and Broadway and someone who’s face appeared in my mind, and possibly some of yours, when I heard the show’s title for the first time, was next on… and then she wasn’t. Hang on!

We get to  see Kerry talking about risk and then we cut to a shelf stacker called David.

You don’t suppose they might be building us up for a bit of tension do you?

David sang very well. I loved his voice and his version of ‘Man who can’t be moved’ almost stopped me screaming stuff about singing judges songs.

Again, the experience was tainted for me by the insistence on telling us all how he’d quit his job so he too was taking a huge risk. He was stacking shelves not piloting the space shuttle. I know times are hard and even I can’t get a job, but shelf stacking is the kind of career you can afford to take a bit of time off from. ‘You quit your job? No way! You crazy maverick son of a gun! You’ve sweated blood working your way up to ‘frozen foods’ and then turned your back on it all for the chance to sing!’

That’s another thing. Don’t you find it uncanny how they just happen to crowbar the big important question in there? It’s not as blatant as watching someone backstage crying over a broken heart and then walking out to be asked by Simon Cowell, ‘so tell us a little bit about your love life’ completely out of the blue, but when Danny suddenly decided to ask 16 year old Goth Holly how old she was I swear I heard a tiny voice shouting ‘Age! Age! Ask her age! Quick!’ into his earpiece.

Tom said he thought David was a girl, then again he also said he thought Vince Kidd was two people and that Matt and Suleen were one. I don’t mean to be unkind but, looking at them, I thought Vince wasn’t even one and Matt and Suleen were nearer three.

Then Kerry comes on- the VT is all about how nervous she is (in spite of having sold out the Royal Albert Hall).

She goes on, she sings ‘Son of a Preacher Man’. Nobody turned around. Maybe she’d have been better with a Bonnie Tyler number? Tom tells her she’s already made it so it’s no biggie and Billiam tells her she was phenomenal- nothing new there. Then we get an insight into what game we’re watching. Jessie, like a nightclub bouncer, says there’s only ‘ten people’ allowed, and Danny says he’s looking for a specific type of girl singer. Sorry? What?

Afterwards, as we’re growing to understand how the mechanics of the show really work and that these judges are not only hamstrung but forced to gamble and, therefore, make huge mistakes like this, we get to hear Tom telling the viewing public directly something like, “You see? She’s an established star and she didn’t get picked! It just goes to show how tough it is with so many great singers!”

Well it would be if there were Tom but give me Kerry over ALEKS (yes, that’s how he spells it) and I might believe you.

Little Aleks was cheeky and nice enough to listen to but I doubt three seconds is long enough to really judge anyone’s voice and yet Bill was spinning like a top before he’d cleared his throat. Again, the backstory was all about how he’s a bit of a romantic and the ladies love him. Low and behold, he’s got Jessie on stage and he’s trying for a kiss… I really should get those odds through any day now.

Other contestants came and went, as they tend to. The pattern seems to be, if William likes you he pretty much offers you a record deal there and then and a world tour, in spite of the fact that only one act can win. Danny tells everyone he picks that they’re going to win (see above). Jessie, gorgeous and genuinely funny though she is, seems to have her Lycra suppliers on standby in case one of her catch phrases sticks and they can go into print before start of business the next day. As for Tom, well he gets his own little five minute name-drop game with Billy boy played on a loop. It’s now called ‘Jacko Verses Elvis Time’ because I doubt they were mentioned this much when they were alive.

Don’t get me wrong. For every “How come she’s gigging all over the country in pubs and clubs if she’s only sixteen?” I also had a smile on my face. I love the chemistry between the judges. Jessie is like a female Robbie Williams, a natural comic and totally relaxed with an audience. Will.I.AM is also a good laugh. I like his humour. Like I said last week, The BBC have really pulled it out of the bag in picking these four and, to be honest, it’s this that is keeping me hooked.

My fear comes when we see the final teams and realize none of them would make it to the live finals of American Idol and we need the judges to really sell this show. Without the hype-building skills of American networks or even ITV and with the need to maintain a little decorum on behalf of the license fee payers, we might end up with something caught out by its own premise. We shall see.

THE VOICE: WEEK 1.

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Right!

Before we start, before we even think about starting and are still in bed scrambling for the snooze button, let’s get something very clear indeed.

‘The Voice’ ISN’T about finding a voice.

Let’s just knock that idea on the head and put it in a dark corner to come round in its own time and wander off unnoticed shall we?

The notion that this is all about pure singing ability and nothing else is so absurd that it’s forced me to use the words, ‘notion’ and ‘absurd’ and I’m not even in a period drama.

The number of indicators that disprove the title are far too numerous to list here but the opening couple of contestants pretty much said it all.

We open with a 17-year-old who’s first sentence is about how important songwriting is to her and how she’s always getting picked on.

BOOM!

That’s pretty much all you need to hear. Instantly we know that this, just like ‘X-Factor’ is about milking some undiscovered talent for phone votes. If you haven’t got a back-story that will have us all wiping tears from the screens of our mobiles then forget it.

Jessica played a Jessie Jay song- what were the odds? Sang about as well as your average teenager who can sing. Mascara flowed backstage and mindless teenies screamed out front.

What should have happened was the judges eventually turn around, once the singing has stopped, and tell her they didn’t pick her because even though she could probably get by as a performer, this show is all about The Voice and there are more chops in Paul McCartney’s fridge.

Instead, all four judges wanted to work with her like she’d just invented singing from scratch, and Will.i.am…Will.I.Am.. Will- sod it, Bill, offered her global success and record deals in every country he could think of before anyone else had even spoken. When they did, it wasn’t really worth it.
Hmmm. That was kind of easy. Well done Jessica- or ‘The New Whitney’ as we should probably call her. Bullseye! Lets send the crew home- job done! Lights off Tom, last one down the Grammies pays for the Chrystal!

Jessica, now, a middle-of-the-road, unheard-of teenager with a single, bog-standard performance to her name, has the unenviable task of telling someone who has produced Michael Jackson why she’s not picking him. It was like ‘Blind Date goes to Hollywood’ and little Billy was snubbed in favour of Miss. J. because ‘number one hits don’t matter’ to our little Irish Superstar. She’s ‘a songwriter’ and it’s all about ‘making music and sharing my message.’

WOAH!! No it’s not- not to us anyway! Not here on ‘The Voice’! Anywhere but here surely? Come on!
It’s all about THE VOICE isn’t it? I’m no vocal coach but I know she’s vocally about as unique as a pair of Crocs.

I had to take a moment. I had to slap myself in the face and grow up a little.
My hopes that this would carry the integrity the BBC usually floats above all other channels on, was misguided. How silly of me for thinking it might do what it says on the tin (what it ‘reads’ on the tin actually because tins can’t speak- but I digress) and be just about finding the best voice in the country. How naïve can I be?

If they wanted to find the best voice in the country they would have done it differently and would almost certainly be choosing mostly professionals why? Well because life’s like that. They’re professionals for a reason.

Don’t get me wrong, there are examples of undiscovered gems that only a talent show can unearth- over on the other side in the ‘shallow lands’ of ITV we had a teenage fat lad on BGT that had me crying so hard I got snot on the dogs.

HE should have been on The Voice- it was made precisely for people like him.
Even a half-deaf nobody like me could hear that his voice was up there- WAY up there. Better (in my view of course) than Russell Watson… now what’s his nickname again? And Paul Potts- not to be confused with Pol Pot under any circumstances, and even the Susan ‘Bovine’ Boyle. This kid has a truly amazing voice. But instead of having Tom Jones on his feet shouting the Louis Walsh anthem- “You’re what this show is all about!” He was having his chins stared up at by Carmen Electra who’s about as appropriate a judge of anything but nipple bronzer and smiling through ‘pout cramp’ as Jessie Jay is on making it in spite of being fat and ugly.

Breathe…. Find a happy place… it’s only TV.

So, with my new awareness of The Voice fully updated I watched on while, somewhere in my subconscious, there was yet another memorial service for a little bit of my soul.

Next up we had Sean- formerly of boy band ‘FIVE’… ‘5IVE’… ‘FIV5’?- sod it ‘V’. He suffered the ignominy of four chair backs and smiled through the tumbleweed. The judges turned and told him what an amazing voice he had and that they just ‘couldn’t see what they could do’ for him? Well picking him would have been a start. Jessie said she would love to listen to his voice all day, at home. Well, unless he comes round to fit her new kitchen, she’s not gonna get the chance now is she? His voice wasn’t great so, in this instance, they were right but the cracks in the premise of this show were already so clear it was like skydiving over the Grand Canyon and we were only two songs in. Sean could have had the voice of an angel but his story and his lack of anonymity had sealed his fate before he drew breath.

And so it went on, We had a lady with a good voice and a bald head who I, and I suspect the entire audience, felt a little robbed of their emotion by when she announced it was alopecia. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a horrible thing to happen to anyone, especially a woman trying to make it as a singer. But in the world of unintentionally bald women it’s something of a best-case-scenario.

We had an overweight, slightly effeminate Adele impersonator and Tom Jones fan. Surprisingly only one judge turned around- it was Tom… what did you say those odds were again? He was a good singer with a great personality. They all said they thought it was a woman singing and then Tom, clearly not on message, said he thought he sounded like him and, as the laws of inevitability crashed into his lap, then had to turn and ask the other judges if they thought he sounded like a woman too?

When Tom Jones has to ask people who have been chosen to judge singing talent if he sounds like a woman it’s time to throw your glitter wig into a bucket and ride out-of-town.

This is my biggest problem with ‘The Voice’- the judging process.

I like, and respect, all the judges and when I heard that TJ was one of them I instantly expected him to do what everyone wants from this show. I like Jessie and Bill and Danny from The Script. All quality judges- and not a Carmen Electra amongst them. This is what the BBC does but it usually makes its own programs and doesn’t buy them in. When it does we get this.

This was the first episode and by the end we already had Tom and Bill dropping names like they were playing Top Trumps and it had turned into a judge fight just like all the others that follow the laws as dictated by the much-thumbed ‘how to make talent shows’ by S. Cowell.

They’d run out of pleas, were bereft of ways to sell themselves to their prospective protégés and had to resort to flirting, begging and bragging by the end credits.

We’ve got an entire series to go yet!

Instead of the show allowing them to say, “Sorry mate but I can’t see how I’m going to discover you if you’ve already been discovered.” Which would be fair enough on the X-Factor. They have to keep it all about the singing, even though it’s clearly not, or they’ll get plebs like me complaining in our dozens. So someone with a voice like a toddler murmuring from the far end of a storm gets offered world domination and someone with a great voice but no back story will be told they’re ‘pitchy’ or not ‘leading’ enough instead by a woman who owes a large part of her success to skin-tight lycra.

I know I need to relax and just enjoy it. I will, I promise. But for now I can’t help but despair at what seemed like something new being the same old crap as everything else but with a new gimmick.

Shame really… still, can’t wait till next week!