You have every excuse not to have watched this year’s series of The Jump. Not least because of last year’s series of The Jump, a television programme of such blistering disappointment that it may very well have contravened a slew of trade descriptions acts. If you didn’t watch this year’s show, however, you sort of missed out. And that’s because, by some genuinely inexplicable reason that might be more down to witchcraft than anything else, The Jump turned out to be actually quite good.
There were two huge problems with The Jump’s first run. Importantly, for a supposedly live show, nothing much actually happened. Episodes mostly consisted of Davina McCall introducing footage of things that had taken place earlier that day, which kicked all trace of jeopardy out of proceedings.
Second, it turned out that ski-jumping is only fun to watch when it involves people who are any good at ski-jumping. At beginner level, on minuscule training jumps that barely lift you off the ground and are rubbish to look at, it’s a huge disappointment. It felt like a cheat to call the show The Jump when what the celebrities were actually doing barely even qualified as a bob.
But this year was like a different show. The bulk of the events took place live, which helped to inject a satisfying frisson of danger. When one celebrity clattered off her skis during a race last week, the reaction – from the host to the commentator to the cameramen – was one of genuine panic, with crash-zooms and babbled ad-libs and nervous glances off-camera. It actually felt like an event. (Admittedly, it does seem a bit crass to justify the watchability of a television programme by pointing to a potentially horrific injury, but this is The Jump for crying out loud. It’s not as if people were tuning in to see demonstrations of technical aptitude, is it?)
Also, they jumped this year. One of the elimination events was called an air jump, where the contestants were pinged several metres into the air before crashing down on to an inflatable mat. As a sport, the air jump was terrible. The only skills you needed for it were fundamental bravery and the ability not to land on your head. It was less the Olympics and more Total Wipeout. However, as a piece of television it worked perfectly. And, more importantly, it took us a nudge closer to my dream of watching a show called Celebrity Human Cannonball.
That said, last night’s final did revert slightly to the bad old days of series one. Most of the action was presented to us in the form of recorded clips, and the climactic jump-off at the end – back on the underwhelming ski slopes – didn’t really feel particularly climactic. Not that it mattered, I suppose, because everyone seemed more intent on having fun than winning or losing. This, combined with McCall’s most energetic presentation for years, positioned The Jump as the friendliest reality show around, the Celebrity Big Brother it was OK to like because there weren’t loads of horrible dicks in it.
Shows like The Jump aren’t meant to improve like this. They’re supposed to be like Tumble, where the utter witlessness on display is immediately punished by a quick cancellation. Or they’re supposed to be like Splash!, where the second series is just a lazy replica of the first and the whole thing stinks of last-chance, please-like-me desperation.
But The Jump underwent a root-and-branch overhaul. The sets were better, the games were better and everyone actually looked as if they were having fun. I mean, I still wouldn’t be able to name any of the celebrities if you put a knife to my throat, but that’s par for the course these days. If next year’s series of The Jump is as much of an improvement as this year’s has been, it might even be something to look forward to.
