TV Preview, The Voice UK – Live Final (ITV, Saturday): The stars of tomorrow? We shall see...
While fans of ‘The Voice’ eagerly await tonight’s climax of series seven, Sean O’Grady discovers more talent and ability in ‘Wannabe’, BBC3’s skewering of the talent show genre
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Your support makes all the difference.The Voice UK – Live Final arrives on ITV on Saturday night, and, we must all fervently hope, it will mean the programme manages to find its first star in its seventh series. It’s a bit odd that it hasn’t, in fact.
Now, it’s accepted that British talent shows have featured some truly execrable acts, routines so bad that they’re good, and others so bad they’re bad. Indeed, much pleasure can be gleaned from the sheer yawning comical gap between the wannabe stars’ hyperinflated belief in their own talents and the manifest poverty of their work. Who hasn’t laughed when a juggler’s dropped his balls?
Still, these much derided shows have produced some memorable talents too, often, in the old days, taking a short cut from the year-in-year-out grind of working your way through the circuit of working men’s clubs, and in more recent times, just a by-product of our celeb-crazed society.
So we should thank the talent spotters for discovering (in no particular order): Sir Lenny Henry, Les Dawson, Susan Boyle, Lena Zavaroni, One Direction, Victoria Wood, Leona Lewis and Pam Ayres, among many others. Judges Tom Jones, Jennifer Hudson, will.i.am and Olly Murs promise (threaten?) a cover of the Beatles’ “Come Together”, and at least the winner will get a recording contract, and, very likely, an education in the meaning of the word “capricious”, as applied especially to fame.
Perhaps talent shows are a little less necessary in an age of proliferating digital channels and outlets, places such as YouTube after all, where anyone can invite the world to witness their rendition/murder of “My Way” or agree that their pet cat is the most entertaining thing on the planet. Certainly, BBC3 (especially since it moved over to life as a digital-only channel) has proved itself an engine of new comedy talent.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in two series you can catch this week – the final episode of the second series of This Country and the “boxed set” of Wannabe. Daisy Cooper’s performance as the hapless and hopeless Kerry Mucklowe surpasses itself this week for blending tragedy, comedy and absurdity in one moving virtuoso turn. On the strength of that alone I am hoping for a third run for the team – they look like they’ve still got much to give us.
Wannabe also comes courtesy of a sharp comic wit – in this case Lily Brazier who you might recognise as MC Grindah’s girlfriend/fiancée/wife in People Just Do Nothing (another BBC3 hit). This time she plays Maxine Hancock, a deluded and faded pop star of Nineties pop band Variety, hoping to find the big time again with a strangely concocted reunion of the surviving band members (plus a random sex worker). The attempt to foist ‘Mum Pop’ on the world is a magnificent spectacle, and we must have much, more of Lily and the gang. Credit, then, also to an astonishingly strong cast, including Nicholas Burns (memorable as the urban prat Nathan Barley), Jim Howick (Peep Show) Alexis Strum and Amy Booth Steel. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
I don’t know if anyone has had the time or gumption to ever try to count the number of Agatha Christie theatre film and TV adaptions there’s been, but I should imagine they exceed those of any other author… even Jane Austen. Here’s another one, then, for Sunday night – Ordeal By Innocence. All the requisites for a Sunday night in front of the telly are there; murder, tweedy suits, twinsets and pearls, trilbies, Wolseley 4/44 police cars, posh folk, posh houses and posh gardens. Plus Bill Nighy, which is all the guarantee of quality you really need. (Where, by the way, is Nighy’s knighthood?)
Come Home comes to its conclusion this week, and, for all its sometimes eccentric plotlines the actors, and especially Christopher Eccleston, made the essential point of the drama – “who gets the kids?” –compelling enough to sustain over the three-episode run. No spoilers, here, obviously but I’ll merely promise that yet more layers of a complex marriage are peeled away in some excruciating detail.
Last, for those seeking sanctuary from the blanket coverage of the 21st Commonwealth Games, the Olivier Awards are up for grabs on Sunday evening, with the historical musical Hamilton the favourite to scoop the pot. In a way I suppose it’s just another talent show, though with the talent. Catherine Tate is your host.
The Voice UK – Live Final (ITV, Saturday 8.30pm); This Country (BBC3, and BBC1, Tuesday 10.45pm); Wannabe (BBC3); Ordeal By Innocence (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Come Home (BBC1, Tuesday 9pm); Commonwealth Games (BBC2, BBC1, daily); The Olivier Awards (Sunday, ITV 10pm)
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