How did the series finale compare with one of Gareth Malone’s? The singers, and the storytelling, fell on a flat note.
The Choir That Rocks
ITV1
On the finale of The Choir That Rocks the 8,000 amateur singers corralled into Wembley Arena hoped that their promised special guest might be Barry Manilow. They would have settled for Michael Bublé. They got the man from the Go Compare adverts. A groan went up, but Wayne Evans made their knees wobble anyway with Nessun Dorma. They are really not fussy, that lot, as you could tell from listening to them.
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So let’s “go compare” The Choir That Rocks with any of the BBC’s Gareth Malone amateur chorister series. Malone actually expects his singers to learn how to sing. His arrangements are complex ensembles. For the CTR Wembley Arena concert, turning up was the main thing. A group of men were given two rehearsals to learn Pretty Woman, complete with rudimentary arm and foot moves, which, on the night, they copied, Simple Simon manner, from their conductor.
But TV is really about the storytelling, and, despite camera crews being sent off all over the country, The Choir That Rocks failed to find any really compelling human narratives among the 8,000, beyond, last night, the female soloist with a heart condition and a widower who had got his mojo back. Someone’s car wouldn’t start, but five minutes later it did. Ryan from Welwyn Garden City was considered a catch by the ladies, but none caught him. There was little humour either, although I suspect that we were meant to find the idea of middle-aged, middle-class people singing rock songs vaguely amusing. The only fun bit was when a woman wrote to the choir’s founder, Caroline Redman Lusher, to say that she would not sing a song about fondling testicles. The song was Chain Reaction and the objectionable line was “You make me tremble when your hand moves lower”. They could be dancing, with hands on the hip, Redman Lusher suggested, but only got into more trouble with “you taste a little and swallow slower”. Wine, she suggested. It was like the Pete and Dud sketch in which they desex Mama’s Got a Brand New Bag. Even the emotional pay-off from the concert was not very great, although a pay day it was. You have to admire Redman Lusher for making money out of other people entertaining themselves.
Planet of the Apemen
BBC Two
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Planet of the Apemen, which uses dramatisations to illustrate the progress of Homo sapiens, was as silly as last week, but gets a star back because the experts sounded surer of their claims. I was taken with the theory that specialisation and the trade of skills put us on the winning side in the fight against the Neanderthals. But the drama, played out by a cast of several, could be summarised under the title Byana, the Plucky Cavewoman. In Raquel Welch bearskin, Rebecca Scroggs as Byana demanded the right to throw spears (“Why can’t we hunt?” “Men do the hunting!”), flirted with a Neanderthal and decided she no longer wanted to be “married”. Schools programming, at best.