I’m at London’s Elstree Studios, standing in the wings of Lip Sync Battle UK’s showbiz set, all bare Broadway bulbs and artfully exposed brickwork. It’s a grand setting for a miming competition, though one somewhat undercut by the cheery, unpretentious air of Lip Sync Battle UK’s presenting duo, Mel B and Professor Green. “Just saved your life!” Green hoots as he spares me from whacking my head on a sharp outcrop of staircase. Mel and “Pro” (a name I in no way intend on calling him) are reaching the end of filming the first series of the UK version of the hit US show. An air of finality hangs amid the pre-show hubbub. “It’s all gone so quickly,” Green says, mournfully.
Lip Sync Battle began as a recurring segment on US chatshow Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. Two celebrities went head to head, “performing” two songs each in the universally accepted medium of mime, with the studio audience deciding the winner via the universally accepted medium of whooping. It was an instant hit: clips of Joseph Gordon-Levitt flouncing haughtily to Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass and Emma Stone spitting DJ Khaled’s All I Do Is Win went viral. A spinoff was inevitable, and the LL Cool J and Chrissy Teigen-fronted standalone show became a huge success in its own right. Its highlights continue to explode over social media: did you see Anne Hathaway riding the wrecking ball? The Rock clomping about like an oiled horse to Taylor Swift? Channing Tatum’s surprise deployment of the actual Beyoncé? If not, you’re definitely about to Google them, aren’t you? Such is the allure of pristine celebs making themselves look like numpties. It’s this cross-appeal that the UK version has the challenge of emulating.
“It’s not exactly like the American show,” says Green, as members of the production crew scurry around us. “We definitely inject ourselves into the format.” Appointing Mel B – whose fondness for profanity could make Ozzy blush – is a clue as to the direction of the UK version. They’re going for “a little bit edgy, and not slick”, according to Mel. “Sometimes on TV shows you get a panic when people start swearing,” Green explains, “and it changes the atmosphere. Here, we’re the only ones that swear. Normally when we fuck up lines.” (Which, from my vantage point, appears to happen a fair bit.) The show’s success in the US lies in it attracting huge names keen on sticking a self-effacing side of themselves above the PR parapet. Here in the UK, we’re more prone to a default hum of self-mockery and entirely used to seeing our celebrities send themselves up. This version needs to find a niche less reliant on goofy novelty alone, and a post-watershed vibe may provide that.
An audience of millennials begin to mill into the studio. The lights soften. The show begins. Tonight’s episode sees Pennine-vowelled funster Jason Manford go mime-to-mime with soap munchkin Michelle Keegan. I’m not allowed to speak to them: the songs they’ll be performing are a closely guarded secret – from each other, from the audience, even from the presenters. Keegan and Manford are busy preparing. It’s not until the show unfolds that I find out the extent of these preparations, and I understand the secrecy.
Things begin unassumingly enough with Manford and Keegan performing a song each in civvy garb. Keegan, somewhat inevitably, opts for Wannabe by the Spice Girls. It goes down well. (“Would you wannabe in the Spice Girls?” Green asks from his DJ booth. “No she wouldn’t,” chips in Mel, “they’re all fookin’ bitches.” Yes, she’s joking.) Both then retreat backstage to change for the main event. Keegan’s out first, performing Sex On Fire in a leather catsuit, a wig the size of a Ford Granada and stilettos, shooting actual fire from her bosoms. It’s quite a spectacle – but one that’s thoroughly upstaged by Manford’s rousing rendition of Frozen’s Let It Go in full princess garb, replete with a troupe of snowman backing dancers, fake snow and actual, if hardly Len Goodman-wowing, choreography. Green hurls a fake snowball at Mel, hitting her square in the chest. “Right on the boobs!” she yelps. “Didn’t feel it. They’re fake.” The whoops of the audience declare Manford the clear winner. It’s fair to say no one saw that performance coming.
“Just because someone is a performer doesn’t mean they give the best performance,” says Green. Mel agrees: “Whoever seems nervous gets on there and kills it. Often the ones that think they’ve got it crumble.”
Coming up in the series are Vic Reeves, Johnny Vegas and Georgie Porter. While it doesn’t boast the Tatums and Biebers of its American dad, this UK version also sidesteps that show’s frat party vibe for something closer to an end-of-the-pier show. “Everybody that’s come on has said, ‘Oh my god, that was so much fun. I want to do it again,’” says Mel. “My phone’s already blown up about the next series. Simon Pegg was like: ‘I can’t believe you’ve come to the end already, count me in for the next one.’”
Both Green and Mel seem keen for there to be a “next one”. “It’s too much fun not to want to do it again,” she says. “If I wasn’t part of the show I’d want to be in the audience.” Would she ever have a go herself? She recoils in mock disgust. “Oh noooo,” she booms plummily, “I don’t lip sync daahling.”
Lip Sync Battle UK is on Friday, 10pm, Channel 5
