I'm moved by sadness to post on BBC1's new entertainment show Just the Two of Us which launched last night for an hour on BBC1 and will apparently be with us nightly until the end of time.
Photograph: BBC
Broadly, I don't care if BBC1 wishes to pair some minor celebrities with some singers and have them sing duets badly for an hour. It's not technically a crime and I have a fairly high tolerance for celebrities being humiliated live on television.
Just the Two of Us, though, is a disgrace to the genre of celebrity reality TV. It's a cynical piece of copycat format television, rushed to screen with no discernible thought or care. Not only does it make itself nasty and ridiculous, it goes even further by cheapening the successful show which it emulates so faithfully. And it betrays those of us who love lowbrow telly done well.
Strictly Come Dancing, while not to my taste, was undeniably a fantastic format show which proved that a celebrity talent contest could be done with warmth, charm and skill. That a broad audience could once again fall in love with ballroom dancing was extraordinary and seductive in itself. Its mix of judges - the spiky one, the nice one and the informed one -- had been done before, but it was all about opening the door to a new world. You know a format has something special when it has 'buzz' among the over 50s. As with Coast and Who do you think you are, it had my parents on the phone. I know it's the 16 to 34s who are hard to reach, but it's the over 50s who are truly hard to impress. The only problem with Strictly Come Dancing is that the producers made it look easy. So others piled in.
Strictly Come Dancing on Ice or whatever they're calling the ITV Saturday night version is also a clone, no doubt about it. Version 2.0 has slightly more ridiculous judges (one of them may be a direct transfer, or they may just all be merging into one uber judge. I can no longer be sure) but the principle behind its success is the same. We don't really understand ice dancing. We haven't even thought about figure skating since 1987 so watching them learn a difficult new skill and get better each week is rewarding. There's challenge, there's effort and there's reward. There's also showbiz trooper Bonnie Langford and that can only be good.
But Just the Two of Us? Any veneer of work and improvement is scratched away by the realisation that this show has been scheduled nightly so not only will the contestants not get any better, they'll probably get worse (saints preserve us). And the format has already become so hackneyed through overuse that even those taking part seem bored with it. Lulu looked to my untrained eye like a woman already nauseated by the tedium of pretending to be Arlene Phillips for an hour a night. Stuart Copeland, forced to be enthusiastic about Fiona Bruce, simply appeared bored. Tess and Vernon - compelled by the 'light entertainment' atmosphere, to make coy references to their marriage and the fact that they have sex - were just sleepwalking. Some chap from Hollyoaks looked terrified by the nudge-wink suggestion that he was sleeping with Jo from S-Club; a romance simulated no doubt because the Strictly Come Dancing production bible dicates that on the fourth day Natasha Kaplinsky fell for Brendan the naughty dancer and lo! a hit was created...
So here's my proposition: Just the Two of Us is the most cynical piece of television ever. Go on, prove me wrong. Not by telling me how good it is though, as I will laugh in your face. No, I challenge you to come up with a better example. Note: this is not a competition to name the worst show ever broadcast, we're looking specifically for cynicism here.
