Are the winds of change finally blowing across TV singing contests? It would be about time. Ice ages have come and gone in less time than it’s taken for viewers to tire of its hatchet-faced judges and retina-scorching sets. Yet here we are, with The X Factor’s ratings plummeting; The Voice slumming it on ITV and reduced to a phlegmy croak; Pitch Battle’s tawdry choral contest prompting a collective cry of “must we?”; and the Gary Barlow-masterminded Let It Shine declared DOA. Even the BBC’s cringe-fest Even Better Than the Real Thing, in which “fans” showed their love for their favourite pop singers by honking through their hits in a series of atrocious wigs, was a one-off, surely deemed too flimsy for an entire series.
Still, if we know anything about talent shows, it’s that they are TV’s answer to the Hydra: cut down one and more will grow in its place. Be upstanding, then, for Sing: Ultimate A Cappella (6 October, 9pm, Sky1), in which amateur singing groups from across the UK are invited to wow viewers “using only the power of their voices”. This is, says host Cat Deeley, “a singing show like no other”, a bold claim given all the other programmes that have featured members of the public singing in front of audiences using their actual vocal cords. But no matter. It is hoped that, by keeping a lid on the wardrobe budget and stripping away the bombastic musical accompaniment favoured by its predecessors, Sing will breathe new life into an ailing format. To which the only sane response is: dream on, chumps.
Every week, five groups are required to sing in front of a panel of judges whose glittering credentials, we learn, include having had undisclosed parts in West End shows such as Shrek: The Musical and Sister Act, and having “many musical qualifications including a masters degree in songwriting”. Excellent. I look forward to my invitation to join next year’s Man Booker prize panel based on my A-level in English lit.
There are no bleeding-heart backstories manipulating viewers into pity-votes, while the obligatory family members weeping side of stage are nowhere to be seen. Clearly an executive decision has been made to make a singing contest where singers just … sing. All of which means that while the show is pure of heart and humane of spirit, it’s also boring as hell.
Many of the contestants in the opening episode are university pals who found kinship in their first year by dressing like 1950s doo-woppers and practising harmonised versions of S Club 7 songs while everyone else was out getting twatted on jelly shots. It’s with a note of melancholy that a member of Academy, an all-male group made up of science and law students from Bristol University, reflects: “We’re all currently single at the moment. Who knows what might happen?” Elsewhere, in Elle and the Pocket Belles, swing and rap are united to produce a sound so excruciating that dogs howl several postcodes away. The judges deem it a triumph.
While there is no disputing the friendship-building properties of this apparently overlooked art form, students reinventing the Flying Pickets for the 21st century does not, alas, make for world-class entertainment. Odds are that, by Christmas, Sing will be lying in the TV morgue next to Let It Shine and Sky commissioning editors will brainstorming its successor. Because clearly we haven’t suffered enough.
