Simon Cowell’s intestines must be growling angrily under that waistband. He spent a year preparing Star Duets for ITV and then the BBC nipped in with Just the Two of Us, which runs from Thursday to Sunday on BBC One for two weeks from February 23. The two ideas are just too similar — professional singers paired with celebrities compete in performing duets. ITV has withdrawn, with Cowell chuntering that it was his idea, though his consolation prize is a more lucrative sale to the Fox network in the US.
This reinforces two eternal truths about such talent/reality shows. First, the format is god. It can turn so-so producers into billionaires and lead to vicious court battles when Celador’s Celebrity Niagara Falls Barrel Jumping is accused of ripping-off Endemol’s Celebrity Death Plunge. Second, weird people are sitting in development labs like mad alchemists, endlessly combining the same entertainment substances, hoping to turn base humans into gold — and coming up with near-identical ideas.
Mind you, the BBC could probably argue moral ownership. Audiences get two types of emotional pay-off in public-exposure telly: humiliation and “feel-good”. By now reality TV has turned celebrity humiliation into an art form: Jeremy Beadle forced to discuss his low sperm-count, Jennie Bond buried alive with rats, George Galloway in a leotard.
But from Opportunity Knocks on, the talent show was a “feel-good” zone. The genius of Pop Idol and The X Factor was to combine the humiliation of talentless punters, torn to shreds by Cowell in the early rounds while the nation chortled with Scha-denfreude, with a feel-good ending as the survivors emerged famous.
Advertisement
It was Morecambe and Wise who popularised the celebrity feel-good slot. While once there was a frisson in discovering that the prim newsreader Angela Rippon was a hoofer, now it is part of the job description as BBC staffers compete to send themselves up on charity telethons.
When the BBC brought back Bruce Forsyth for Strictly Come Dancing it was tapping in to this tradition, while combining it with the interactive competitive talent show. Its success proved that some viewers didn’t particularly want to see Dean from dispatch, or Vanessa Feltz for that matter, reduced to a blubbering wreck. They would rather immerse themselves in the elegant sexual chemistry of Darren Gough gyrating rhythmically with a fit bird.
According to the executive producer, Karen Smith, Just the Two of Us hopes to pull off a similar trick. Eight singers, including Rick Astley, Alexander O’Neal and Jocelyn Brown, will coach eight celebs including Nicky Campbell, Fiona Bruce and Gaby Roslin. Sadly there are no George Galloways this time (though Five is promising the Lib Dem MP Julia Goldsworthy on the next The Games), so we won’t get Mark Oaten and Simon Hughes crooning Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off (“You say ‘bicycle’ and I say ‘bisexual’ ”).
Personally I’d like my newsreaders and serious reporters to stick to their day jobs and preserve a bit of gravitas. But apparently Nicky Campbell’s voice is a revelation and it’s his secret ambition to be Captain Von Trapp. If you like your beauty without cruelty, this should be the show for you.