Strictly Come Dancing: Halloween Week

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Strictly Come Dancing: Halloween Week

October 31, 2016 - 21:24
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This weekend, it was Strictly’s annual Halloween spook-tacular, when ghosts and ghouls take over the ballroom and the dancing, sadly, takes a back seat to make way for all the gimmicks.

Strictly's Ed Balls

By Matthew Gormley

This weekend, it was Strictly’s annual Halloween spook-tacular, when ghosts and ghouls take over the ballroom and the dancing, sadly, takes a back seat to make way for all the gimmicks.

Three weeks ago when I wrote about Strictly’s Movie Week, I gushed about how I’ve grown to love themed weeks, despite being apprehensive when they were first introduced in 2010. Halloween week has been an annual event in the Strictly ballroom for the last seven years, and it’s fair to say it’s now starting to wear almost as thin as the veil between the living and the dead on the frightful 31st.

Each year, the Halloween Special attempts to get bigger and better than the previous, and this year was no different. The creative concepts are excellent; the make-up, set design and costumes are second to none. Nobody can accuse the producers of throwing together a half-hearted attempt at a Halloween Special, they really go to town and get into the ‘spirit’ (pun intended) of the night. Some of the celebrities and professional dancers are unrecognisable in their gruesome outfits. This weekend, however, it felt as though there was something missing. Whilst I expected the show to bubble like a fresh brew in a witch’s cauldron, the whole thing was rather flat.

The show opened with a superb group number from the professional dancers, which is always something to look forward to. Set to the Dead or Alive hit ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’, it was a fitting tribute to the late Pete Burns, if not a little ironic, given his colourful and controversial life and career.

Louise Redknapp and partner Kevin Clifton were the first take to the floor, with what turned out to be one my favourite performances of the night. They performed a comic book themed Charleston to the Great Gatsby version of ‘Crazy In Love’. I know what you’re thinking: what can ‘Crazy In Love’ possibly have to do with Halloween? Well, this is a prime example of the clever concepts employed: Louise and Kevin were dressed as Harley Quinn and The Joker, a crazy couple who are in love. Get it? It may seem tenuous, but it all came together to produce a thoroughly entertaining Charleston, and, for me, was the stand-out performance of the night.

Danny Mac has excelled since the very beginning, but his Foxtrot to the spine-tingling Hozier track ‘Take Me To Church’ was lacklustre. With a superb piece of music perfectly fitting for a Halloween routine, I was expecting it to be spectacular. The judges weren’t too impressed either; there were apparently plenty of mistakes throughout. Likewise, Ore and Joanne’s Charleston to ‘I Want Candy’ was unremarkable in comparison to his previous efforts. Anastacia struggled in her Jive to ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, in fact I didn’t pay much attention to what she was doing, instead focusing on the incredible work of her professional partner Brendan, who returned to the dance floor after being taken ill with a chest infection last week.

The problem is that the Halloween theme has simply been done to death; all the appropriate song choices have been used, with some of them even starting to reappear. ‘Love Potion No. 9’, used by Ed Balls and Katya Jones for their chilling Cha Cha Cha on Saturday night, had previously been used by Chelsea Healey and Pasha Kovalev back in 2011. It seems the spooky theme is becoming increasingly more restrictive, as more emphasis is placed on the ‘story’ and ‘character’ of the routine rather than the technicalities of the dance itself. Danny and Oti’s freakish Foxtrox relied on them being tied together throughout, but the piece of red tape got in the way and was undoubtedly the cause of some of their mistakes.

A real bugbear of mine is the scripted VTs and silly sketches that we have to endure instead of actual training room footage. These become increasingly prominent as each series goes on, and on Halloween week they go into overdrive. The cheesy and rehearsed ad-libs take the focus away from the dancing and are just unnecessary.

On Sunday night, the ghastly Ed Balls was voted through yet again, whilst two superior couples were forced to compete in the dance off. The viewers once again dine out on voting for the token idiot, and while it may have been amusing for the first couple of weeks, it’s now gone too far and it’s time to get serious. Whilst we’ll have to endure another embarrassing shuffle from Ed and Katya, it was Anastacia and Brendan who met their grisly end at the conclusion of the Strictly spook-fest.

As we approach the halfway point in the competition, the remaining nine couples set their sights on the Blackpool Tower Ballroom.

Strictly Come Dancing continues on Saturday 5 November 2016 at 6.55pm on BBC One.