Friday, September 28, 2007

The Spice is Right

SAMBA! Dancing with the Stars, UKTV Gold, 8.00pm

We're literally sweating with excitement over the imminent return of Strictly Come Dancing with the promise of, amongst other things, Alesha Dixon being fierce and Gethin Jones wearing tight spandex, not to mention having a legitimate excuse to avoid watching The X Factor on Saturday nights. But we're champing at the bit, and we need something to fill that void between now and then: thankfully UKTV Gold (which, if the fate of UKTV G2 is anything to go by, will shortly be rebranded Maureen to have more in common with its audience or something) is showing the brand new season of Dancing with the Stars, mere days after it airs in the States. Spoilerphobes everywhere rejoice!

Inevitably, in much the same way as international viewers are unlikely to recognise Letitia Dean or Brian Capron, some of the celebrity aspect of the show is rather lost in translation: Josie Maran, anyone? Sabrina Bryan? Mark Cuban? Not exactly household names over here, at least not in our household. But there are a few major coups in the casting - Mel B, hoping to correct the injustice that was Emma Bunton not making the final in Strictly last year because she wasn't a sportsman and therefore hadn't really had A Journey; Marie Osmond, Jennie "I Choose Me" Garth, and Jane Seymour. Pretty impressive, yes?

Presumably you don't need us to tell you how the show actually works, suffice to say that there are only three judges instead of our four (they still have Len and Bruno, but a lady by the name of Carrie Ann Inaba fills in for Craig and Arlene), and Samantha Harris, America's Tess Daly, is out of action for a while after popping out a wee bairn, so her shoes are being filled by season two champ Drew Lachey. We're sure he'll look just darling in a frock and matching pumps. This week's dances are the cha-cha-cha and the foxtrot. And that's all there is. Girl power!

Labels: Dancing with the Stars, TV, UKTV Gold

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

How's about that then?

RETRO! Jim'll Fix It Strikes Again, UKTV Gold, 9.00pm

A colleague of ours once gave us this piece of excellent advice: if you're in that annoying situation where there's a song in your head that you just can't get rid of, the one surefire way to banish it is to start humming or singing the Jim'll Fix It theme tune. Admittedly this does mean, upon occasion, that said theme tune merely replaces the other one on a constant loop in your head, but it still achieves the task it sets out to do. Consider that a useful life tip, brought to you by lowculture absolutely free of charge.

So, in the UKTV habit of commissioning new programmes that are still old in spirit, we have Jim'll Fix It Strikes Again, wherein Sir Jimmy Saville looks through the wondrous televisual archives at some classic Fix-Its, and makes some new dreams come true. Not entirely dissimilar to Wogan: Now and Then, in other words, only with less chatting and more cigars, we'd imagine.

The legendary fix-it where the cub scouts wanted to eat their lunch on a rollercoaster will be recreated by the original cubs - now men in their thirties who probably ought to know better, and we're hoping that on the grounds of decency they won't be dressed in their original uniforms. That's pretty much all you'd need to know. Useless and embarrassing fact: when we were young, we almost wrote to Jim'll Fix It to ask if we could dance on TV to 'I'd Rather Jack' with the Reynolds Girls. We're quite glad we didn't now, given the potential future embarrassment factor, although they'd probably have been glad of the publicity given what fate had in store for them.

We'll probably be taking a bit of a break over Easter (unless we change our minds, of course, and there's every chance of that) but in the meantime, stuff your face with chocolate, enjoy the super double team of Doctor Who and Any Dream Will Do on Saturday night, and don't forget to pay due respect to all the religious thingummybobs that lead to you getting chocolate in the first place.

Labels: Jim'll Fix It Strikes Again, TV, UKTV Gold

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