Can Strictly Come Dancing get its groove back?
As the BBC's flagship show returns to our screens after a summer of controversy, Mark Lawson wonders what it will take for Strictly to waltz into our hearts again.
Imagine if the 8.8 million viewers who watched last December’s final of Strictly Come Dancing were asked to score out of ten the show’s media coverage ahead of this week’s launch of series 22. It’s likely that the numbers on the ping-pong bats would make judge Craig Revel Horwood, even at his most boo-provokingly severe, seem relatively kind.
Earlier this year, actor Amanda Abbington, who withdrew from the 2023 series in week five, accused her professional dance partner, Giovanni Pernice, of using unfairly demanding training methods. Although Pernice strenuously denied her accusations, in June the BBC announced he had left the series.
Another professional dancer, Graziano Di Prima, will also be absent from the new run following reports in July that he kicked his partner, reality TV star Zara McDermott, during rehearsals last year. (He does not deny contact but has suggested it was accidental or clumsy.)
By the time Paralympian Will Bayley alleged, later in July, that the BBC had shown “no duty of care” when he was injured during training in 2019, even the kindest, most constructive members of the fanbase – a sort of audience equivalent of soft-cop judge Motsi Mabuse – would have struggled not to wave a zero.
Such was the public and media interest that when, a short time later, the BBC director-general Tim Davie launched the corporation’s annual report – containing a prominent photo of 2023 Strictly champions Ellie Leach and Vito Coppola and a shout-out in Davie’s list of the best BBC shows – he felt forced to address the loudly stamping feet on the dancefloor.
“Alongside the fun and entertainment there will be a degree of competitiveness, hard work and a will to do well,” Davie said in a section added to his introductory speech. “That’s part of what makes this show. But there are limits and the line should never be crossed.”
Taking questions from journalists, Davie stressed the BBC’s responsibilities to contestants and suggested that “safeguarding” would be increased. This led to reports that “chaperones” would be placed in Strictly rehearsals.
These exchanges raised several questions. Where is the “line” and how does a participant know that they have gone over it? Will there be supervision of all rehearsals and what form might that take? And is it possible that what sounds like a #BeKind Strictly Come Dancing will mean some of the show’s appeal is lost?
The biggest problem – it seems to me – is an inherent tension in the Strictly format, which asks highly trained professional dancers to take amateurs – who range from West End hoofer to the utterly clueless – and do their best to avoid them being embarrassed on air. Most competitors want to go as far as possible and are financially incentivised to do so. So, isn’t it sometimes necessary for the pro dancers to be demanding and hard taskmasters? And isn’t the “line” inevitably subjective? One contestant’s “really pushed me hard today” may be another’s “they hurt and humiliated me”? How do you deal with that?
Since the bad news stories began, the extent of the BBC’s public tip-toeing around the subject would have won straight tens from the judges. Some of that is unavoidable: in common with other employers, the corporation is prevented by law and HR convention from discussing disciplinary procedures involving individual staff members, or publishing the findings of internal inquiries.
On 2nd September, The Sun reported that the BBC was “racing” to conclude its Giovanni Pernice/Amanda Abbington inquiry in order to avoid overshadowing the new series, which starts on Saturday. The newspaper, though, had made this prediction before and BBC sources suggested the timeline was wide of the mark, while reiterating the confidentiality of internal procedures.
That reticence could be justified by employment sensitivities. But the corporation may also be too instinctively defensive when faced with questions that are legitimate and justified. The BBC wants and needs its licence-fee payers to be interested in Strictly Come Dancing, so it can hardly complain if that interest extends to wondering how one of its most reliable ratings bankers will respond.
So, I put some of these questions to the Strictly Come Dancing production team, but in response to most queries the BBC referred me to recently published new safeguarding guidelines. These state that on the new series there “will be a production team member present during training room rehearsals at all times” and the 2024 payroll will include two new roles on the show dedicated to welfare support – a celebrity welfare producer and a professional dancer welfare producer.
The BBC’s current line seems to be that Strictly is a bit of fun that no professional dancer or contestant should take seriously enough to cause discomfort. But the risk for the series is that some of those involved, both amateur and professional, take it as a very serious examination of dance skills – and this may be part of the appeal to the audience. Are they, in short, operating on different sides of the “line”?
Among the 2024 contestants, it seems fair to assume that the definition of a hard day’s training for Olympians Tom Dean, Sam Quek and Montell Douglas might be very different from that of actors Jamie Borthwick and Sarah Hadland and TV doctor Punam Krishan. This may give the professional dancers a dilemma over how pro to go with the amateurs, with the added complication that they also benefit both financially and in terms of media coverage from how far they progress.
And, having seen the departures of Pernice and Di Prima, might this year’s pros adopt a soft-shoe approach for their own protection? Could such caution be reinforced by the severity of the punishment of Jermaine Jenas, who reportedly breached a different set of guidelines (relating to electronic communication with colleagues) and was sacked from Match of the Day and The One Show in double-quick time?
The worry of some at the BBC I spoke to is that the application of a single behavioural code across all shows may overlook the fact that teaching someone with two left feet to rumba can involve a more rigorous approach than other broadcast preparation.
It seems that the BBC may well need to keep up the nifty footwork, to avoid hobbling one of its most popular shows.
Strictly Come Dancing 2024 starts Saturday 14th September at 7:20pm on BBC One and iPlayer.
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