Strictlywatch 2010: week 2 results

I don't think it's a great sign when someone who is completely obsessed with Strictly Come Dancing to the point of blogging about each episode in exhausting (do I mean exhaustive? No I think I really do mean exhausting) detail watches the results show and thinks 'well I don't think I'm going to bother with that again.' But seeing as I did -

Tess Daly looked stunning. Really lovely, flattering dress. Either a case of stopped clock telling the right time twice a day, or the BBC reading my blog really quickly and totally revolutionising their wardrobe policy. I know which I believe. Claudia Winkelman, on the other hand, was dressed as a Victorian baby. Major kudos, BBC, for having two women hosting a prime time show, even if it is only the little sister of Strictly Proper. I'd have liked to see them interact more. Claudia on her own does just fine, but Tess is a straight woman in dire need of a funny partner. Claudia is funny in spades. Let them present together, BBC, oh please. Presenting-wise, the best part of the entire show was the last few seconds when Tess refused to "keeeep dancing" with Claudia.

Other thoughts: spreading the results over the show decreases, rather than increases, tension. The show dancers are pointless, looking lost on the stage and no real fun to watch because nobody knows the personalities behind the dancing. Big error of judgement from the producers. Robbie Williams performs in exactly the same way as I would if I were a pop star, ie not caring much for the usual order of the words, and dancing like a loon. He also looks increasingly like Paul Robinson in Neighbours. Evidence:





And Goldie going was no surprise for those of us expert in the behaviour of Strictly voting audiences.

That's all. This blog, like the results show itself, is both too long and too short, and rather pointless. I think I'll stick to reviewing the main show from now on.

Announcement

Yesterday, halfway through the lunchtime edition of Home and Away, I officially quit my Australian Soap habit. I have been watching Neighbours and Home and Away ever since they first reached British screens over 20 years ago, and every lunchtime since I became a full time writer, and it was only at 2.30 yesterday afternoon that I noticed that they are a tedious, repetitive, mind-rotting waste of my time. I switched off at the exact moment that Tony's nephew Xavier showed up at a beach party in Summer Bay with a handful of unspecified drugs in his pocket and I realised that I could not care less what happened next. Xavier is not entirely to blame, I am also not at all interested in the fact that Dan doesn't really want to move in with Libby, whether Donna and Ringo's first sexual encounter will be as special as Ringo hopes, whether Jack will find out that Roman is still in love with Martha, or whether Melody will make it to the Senior Formal and what havoc she will wreak if she does. This may be a sign of age and maturity, or just a sign that there is nobody I fancy on Neighbours or Home and Away any more.

From now on I will spend my lunch hour reading and / or listening to the radio. But in farewell I post this picture of Kip Gamblin, my favourite ever Home and Away crush, whom very long term blog readers might remember from the early Struggling Author days...


Adieu. I know you are on Casualty these days, but there are limits.

I Predict A Breakdown

Getting yoghurt out of the fridge for breakfast, I found myself with the song 'I Predict A Riot' going around my head. (Something to do with those boistrous bifidus digestivus bacteria?) What confused me was that it didn't seem to be the Kaiser Chiefs singing - the voice was quite different. And then I realised that I was hearing Alan Fletcher, aka Doctor Karl Kennedy from Neighbours, and the version he performed with his band Waiting Room on a documentary I saw about Neighbours a few weeks ago. Witness, if you dare:



Karl Kennedy has taken up residence inside my head and is singing to me. Disturbing.

Neighbours: telepathy

My television is talking to me again. It doesn't do it all that often, but when it does, it's spooky. Today it spoke to me in the form of a very long but utterly pointless conversation on Neighbours about Doctor Who. Pepper (looks like a lingerie model, acts like a lingerie model) and Adam (bizarrely unconvincing as British given that he is, in fact, British) spoke for several minutes on the subject, concluding that, while Tom Baker is untouchable, David Tennant comes a very close second, that in fact David Tennant is also incredibly attractive, as is Billie Piper, who was a fantastic companion, but that Freema in the most recent series was a bit weak.

OH MY GOD! I THINK THAT TOO! MY TELEVISION IS READING MY MIND! MY TELEVISION IS READING MY MIND AND TALKING IT BACK TO ME!

Unless of course there is another reason why Neighbours would take a five minute break to talk about Doctor Who, but I can't imagine what that would be. My television's giving me messages. It's the only explanation. God, I hope it doesn't start asking me to annihilate small villages.

Neighbours: selective amnesia part 2

So it turns out that Paul Robinson is not the only one suffering from selective amnesia: Rebecca had also carefully forgotten a previous encumbent in her bed. So Elle and Oliver are not related after all and can return to doing horizontal rhumba pronto.

I am not sure whether to be disappointed or elated by this news. The accidental incest storyline is after all a classic of the soap genre and we coud all have spent an enjoyable few weeks being appalled as Elle and Oliver try and fail to suppress their taboo attraction for one another. Just like back in 1991.

On the other hand I will confess to being actually surprised by this development. Surprised! Trying to think about when a soap opera has surprised me in the past... trying... trying harder... failing. Soap operas do not surprise. They set up storylines so obvious that a two year old with a basic knowledge of narrative gleaned from reading Spot books could figure them out, and then spend weeks dragging them out until the one day you have a dentist appointment and miss an episode, and then resolve them. Even a sudden soap death tends to be signposted by the deathee's storylines being carefully finished just before they decide to take that moonlit walk along the beach with a storm brewing. (In case you are wondering why I am then such an avid watcher of soaps, it's because I find my real life a bit too unpredictable and I like the reassurance that in one area of my life unresolved sexual tension will *always* lead to a kiss.)

In conclusion, I have to say that the Neighbours screenwriters, in wimping out of the brother-sister-forbidden-love storyline, have actually done something far more daring instead. Kudos!

(I have chosen to illustrate this blog post with a picture of Jane Hall as Neighbours newcomer Rebecca. This is what I am going to look like in ten years time so I may as well get used to it. And no, she's not my long-lost mum. Or is she...?)

Neighbours: selective amnesia

How convenient that Paul Robinson should be suffering from amnesia in Neighbours right now. Not only does that mean he couldn't remember having shagged Rebecca, Oliver's mum, meaning that he fathered Oliver and that his daughter Elle is therefore sleeping with her own brother, it also means that he can't pipe up and say, "What a coincidence! This is just like when my sister Lucy was accidentally shagging her long-lost brother Glenn." Lucy and Glenn, as I recall but Paul does not, carried on their shenanigans even after their inconvenient level of relatedness was uncovered, but the BBC censored it so mostly we got incomprehensible moments of them arguing about seemingly nothing in corridors. I wonder if the screenwriters will be so bold this time around - or if the BBC will let them?

Neighbours: Rosie and Frazer's wedding

I don't know why anyone still bothers to get married in Neighbours. You're only going to end up dead (Dee) or jilted (Annalise) or have your husband realise that he loves you too much to subject you to the horror of beng wed to him and therefore annul the wedding, precipitating your departure from the series (Lynn).

Today, Frazer (professional gambler, lately in wheelchair due to least convincing psychological illness since Lucy's hysterical blindness, now walking again having found superhuman strength in limbs whilst rescuing Ned's long-lost son Mickey from death by electrocution in the pool) and Rosie (lawyer, virgin) got hitched, meaning that doom MUST ensue. And ensue it did: Mickey (Ned's long lost son, lately almost dead in electrified swimming pool) managed to accidentally reverse a giant lorry into the middle of Ramsey Street, incredibly slowly and yet fast enough to crush a minibus carrying all of our best-loved characters. In a cul de sac. Fancy that.

Who will live? Who will die? I can't say for sure. I would just mention, though, that it's probably not the best move to launch a who will live, who will die storyline just after investing a whole lot of money shooting a new title sequence showing which characters are going to be series regulars for the next several months. Just a thought.

Home and Away

Twenty years of Home and Away! God, I feel old. (Though not as old as this pair. It's a successful programme, they could have stretched to airbrushing those bags and wrinkles. Cassie is meant to be eighteen years old! Too much sun, methinks.) I have been watching from the very start, when Alf had hair and Sally - who has been married about three times, and whose actress has an online sex tape - was barely more than a foetus. I like to stop work every day at 6pm and watch a celebratory half hour of Home and Away (which will be followed as of next week by an even more celebratory half hour of Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two, which is appropriate, as the Aussie version of Strictly seems to be won by someone from H&A pretty much every year). Five are also kind enough to show the previous day's episode at noon and the following day's episode on Freeview at 6.30, so if you are really desperate you can watch three episodes in one day, and if that isn't enough, you can read episode synopses on their website that stretch back and forth pretty much until both ends of time.

I also love Neighbours, which I have also watched from the start, and which is my lunchtime break: I'm pretty much an Aussie soap fanatic, and I try to find shame in this status, but so far it eludes me. This is all by way of warning you that there will be many more Neighbours and Home and Away posts to come.

For now, I will just draw your attention to the fact that H&A has just been castigated by the Australian broadcasting watchdog. I wonder what they could possibly have done wrong? Well, could it maybe be the storyline where Martha, having gone off the rails and developed a drinking problem after having an affair with a married man which culminated in an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion, gets involved with the dodgy owner of a dodgy nightclub and ends up as a lapdancer? She won't hear a word against her dubious lover until it's proved that not only has he fathered an illigitimate daughter by one of his dancers and driven another of them to heroin addiction, he is also using the club to sell cocaine. At this point I should probably alert the less informed that Home and Away is, strictly speaking, a children's programme. Apparently the other recent storyline that got them into trouble was one in which "two teenage characters decide to have sex", but I can't comment on that one, as I'm not certain if it refers to Ric and Cassie, Ric and Matilda, Cassie and Jules, Cassie and Mac, Belle and Drew, Belle and Lucas, or Lucas and Matilda, and I would hate to get my details wrong.

I'd write more about this but the lunchtime repeat is poised to start: Brad is going to propose to Sally, little knowing that anyone who does that generally leaves the series shortly after, and there is a storm brewing at sea, which means that anyone currently on a boat will be washed up on shore somewhere where they don't have people, and weeks will pass while Alf Stewart looks for them wearing a fluorescent jacket, and if they are pregnant they will give birth. And that's just twenty-five minutes worth.