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X Factor: the music or the misery
It's a yearly pantomime, that for my money, beats Big Brother hands down. X Factor introduces us to a cast of court jesters, heroes and heroines all watched over by our favourite panel of ugly sisters - Sharon, Louis and Simon. Of course, its the early stages that pack the biggest comedic punch, wannabe after wannabe dispatched with a callous comment from cowardly Cowell or the ever ludicrous Louis Walsh. Once this pageant of pungently awful performers ends, we stumble into more difficult territory - the selection of the acts for the live finals and the live shows themselves.
Morph, a potato and a leprecaun
The selection is a painful process to watch - both the tears of the contestants and contrived reveals by the judges. The show's music ramps up the pressure throughout and there's enough crying to fill a month's worth of Eastenders or a particularly harrowing Hollyoaks rape scene (that soap's speciality). While you can empathise with some of the less odious participants, Kate Thornton is another matter. As time goes by, she and her even more unpleasant counterpart, Ben Shepherd, appear to be nothing more than specially built ITV emotibots programmed to display the same range of emotions as a talking Barbie doll. If ITV's fortunes continue to decline, I would not be surprised to see this mediocre pair replaced with actual robots equipped with levers denoting the required expressions: "Oh darling...", "Your parents will be so proud of you", "The judges have had a tough decision".
Misery wins!
Emotions are at the heart of X Factor but you have to ask, what are they putting in the water? Not a second goes without one contestant or other in floods of tears, red faces expanding across the screen like broken zeppelins. This week's show - the final selection - boiled down to contestants wailing (either tears of happiness or misery) over a musical bed of classic warblers from the Whitney school. After this stage, X Factor can seem like a downward spiral of bad cover versions and orchestrated spats among the judges - a glass of water in Louis's face, a shouting match between Simon and Sharon over some slight. These things and more will happen but will we care about the contestants? Its the usual parade of long shots, people to feel sorry for and gutsy women with hard luck stories and we're bound to feel for some of them. This early in the musical mess that is X Factor, its almost impossible to tell who that might be. Ultimately, the misery always beats the music.
X Factor (and 400 variants) is on ITV1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 76 + y between now next September.
In celebration of the ridiculousness of Sharon Osborne's plastic surgery:
Morph, a potato and a leprecaun
The selection is a painful process to watch - both the tears of the contestants and contrived reveals by the judges. The show's music ramps up the pressure throughout and there's enough crying to fill a month's worth of Eastenders or a particularly harrowing Hollyoaks rape scene (that soap's speciality). While you can empathise with some of the less odious participants, Kate Thornton is another matter. As time goes by, she and her even more unpleasant counterpart, Ben Shepherd, appear to be nothing more than specially built ITV emotibots programmed to display the same range of emotions as a talking Barbie doll. If ITV's fortunes continue to decline, I would not be surprised to see this mediocre pair replaced with actual robots equipped with levers denoting the required expressions: "Oh darling...", "Your parents will be so proud of you", "The judges have had a tough decision".
Emotions are at the heart of X Factor but you have to ask, what are they putting in the water? Not a second goes without one contestant or other in floods of tears, red faces expanding across the screen like broken zeppelins. This week's show - the final selection - boiled down to contestants wailing (either tears of happiness or misery) over a musical bed of classic warblers from the Whitney school. After this stage, X Factor can seem like a downward spiral of bad cover versions and orchestrated spats among the judges - a glass of water in Louis's face, a shouting match between Simon and Sharon over some slight. These things and more will happen but will we care about the contestants? Its the usual parade of long shots, people to feel sorry for and gutsy women with hard luck stories and we're bound to feel for some of them. This early in the musical mess that is X Factor, its almost impossible to tell who that might be. Ultimately, the misery always beats the music.
X Factor (and 400 variants) is on ITV1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 76 + y between now next September.
In celebration of the ridiculousness of Sharon Osborne's plastic surgery:
Comments
I rarely watch any further than the first few weeks - the lack of talent displayed therein is far more entertaining than the cringing desperation later on...