Well after weeks of idle speculation it’s finally here – ITV’s brand new comedy hit sensation (so they’d like you to believe) Sing If You Can (7:20pm ITV1).
It is hosted by Keith Lemon who seems to be able to mention “bang tidy”, but will he be funny without being able to fall back to using “jizz” and “smashing her back doors in” for a cheap laugh? Celebrity Juice posted it’s best figures on Thursday night, will Lemon be able to keep it up for an hour pre-watershed, and will a sizable number of people just see him and click off? And then there’s Stacey Solomon who is lovely but not by any means a decent host. And there’s the games, described by people at the recordings as cheap and crap and you will have to sit through each one twice. The celebrities taking part are *quite* ITV1 and include Jedward (tellingly the ITV TV guide isn’t listing who is on tomorrow’s show).
And yet it’s leading into rating’s behemoth Britain’s Got Talent, and it’s against a failing So You Think You Can Dance? Lemon seems to be in the ascendancy. The advert for it makes it look not too bad.
My head says it’s the next Celebrity Wrestling, my heart has been secretly wavering all week. Which will end up being correct? I’m actually out this evening and will be watching from the comfort of a V+ Box, obviously you aren’t expected to wait with your comments and observations and I’ll read them after I’ve watched the show.
This isn’t the next Celebrity Wrestling. Celeb Wrestling was a completely new untested show, Sing if You Can has been a hit format in France, Portugal and Malaysia. I predict it’ll be a big hit with 16-49s but elderly viewers will prefer to watch the slower paced Secret Fortune.
It’s a hit format in France provided you forget it wasn’t on a major network. I can’t speak for Portugal or Malaysia (similar markets that they are).
To make it even more exciting, there’s always the chance the football before it massively overruns.
Edit: Virgin 17, now Direct Star if you’re playing along at home, which despite apparently being one of their highest rated shows doesn’t appear to get any mentions on the official site at all.
5 mins in and the cheese-o-meter has broken already.
My prediction is that this is a spiritual successor to hole in the wall.
Popular but not for the reasons intended
I REALLY should hate this.
But I don’t. At the moment.
Well the budget hasn’t been spent on celebrity booking.
They took a bit too long to get to the first song, but I’m liking it so far. 🙂
The format is awful at best and the celebs? Well less said about them the better.
However Keith Lemon is doing a great job as is Stacy just a shame it is this they are fronting rather than a format that has something to enjoy apart from the hosts.
I think Vernon Kay is a great presenter but he couldn’t have worked on this show. He wouldn’t fit into something like this. Keith Lemon is very good at it. Less said about Stacey, the better!
Was ITV’s idea to put something on before BGT that made it look highbrow?
Views from digital spy are un-surprisingly negative
Personally – I’ve seen worse on tv – will probably not get a re-commission
I think that what this show really suffers from is a severe case of not being particularly good. It wasn’t funny, end of story. And I HATE Keith Lemon. I’d rather watch Larry the Cable guy for 45 minutes than endure another moment of Keith.
That sums it up pefectly, a poor idea badly executed with completely awful presenters.
Possibly the worst presenting duo since Samantha Fox and Mick Fleetwood wouldn’t have been too bad if the show was any good but it was just awful. Thank goodness Dr Who is back next Saturday (although unfortunately not in the same slot)
I didn’t hate it or anything, and I think they’ve made some significant improvements on other versions of the format I’ve seen (not doing the same distraction twice is a good idea, hopefully they won’t repeat one throughout the series and hopefully they will be a bit better than “some balloons”). Didn’t think Lemon was very funny but he did keep the show going (I’d be very surprised to hear that ver kids think he’s the new Harry Hill, for example). Solomon was predictably loveable but rubbish.
I’m quite impressed that one of the big name celebs for the big opening show is someone who didn’t win Pop Idol almost ten years ago.
I’m intrigued enough to watch next week to see what they come up with, but it’s hard to see it being the next big anything. I’d be very interested to see a five minute breakdown of the ratings.
Perhaps interesting although perhaps not, I’ve had seven times more hits for people searching Don’t Scare the Hare today than I have for Sing If You Can.
How does that compare with the hits you’ve had for Endemol Joe?
I’ve had no hits for Endemol Joe, WHICH IS CLEVERLY IRONIC SEEING THE SHOWS HE BACKS ETC.
I was right with my prediction that Secret Fortune would ultimately turn out to be a flop, wasn’t I 😉 ?
Well even I said it was rather overperforming, so ner.
On the other hand, you were completely off on your prediction for Sing If You Can (quality-wise, at least).
Bollocks!
I’ll say it once again, Sir I-Dislike-Secret-Fortune-alot – any show that gets more than one series cannot really be considered a flop.
And it doesn’t matter whether or not people think it’s a rip-off of DOND and Million (Insert Currency Here) Drop, or whether or not people are bothered to understand the rules.
On the other hand, 101 Ways To Be An Absolute Waste Of License Payers’ Money very definitely was a flop.
There were much, much fewer good words said about it than there were for Secret Fortune – and, most importantly, it won’t be coming back for a second series… 😉 😉
any show that gets more than one series cannot really be considered a flop
I’ve spent a good five minutes thinking about whether I agree with this or not and cannot decide. My conclusion is a waffly grey-scale cop-out: there are flops, there are flops, and there is The National Lottery: The Big Ticket, a 1980 IBM eight-incher with QJT suited inscribed upon it among the floppiest of flops.
Where on the scale of flopperosity would you place:
Survivor?
Love on a Saturday Night?
The People Versus?
…and, as much as it pains me to say it, Wanted?
All of these got at least two series. It remains an open question whether they would have got two series if they had not got an initial commission for at least two series. They probably have to go down in business terms as disappointments rather than tombstone flops, as much as they may (or, in some cases, may not) have had going for them critically.
Heck, The Mole only got two series, for that matter. The budget overrun concerns wouldn’t have mattered if the audience figures had justified it.
I agree Des that any show which gets more than one series is a “hit” on paper. But my mind says the opposite, if that makes sense.
A think a term for this already exists: Not A Hit.
Survivor, TPV and Wanted are all quite interesting examples because they were seen to have “something” and yet they all went through modest revamps in order to try to capture the lightning that had evaded the bottle the first time around. I think all those cases count as merely “meh” whereas a flop is a strong word that needs to invoke a sharp intake of breath and a “Woof, do you rememeber THAT show!?”.
The current UKGS definition of a flop has to fulfill one or more of the following factors:
1) “A high-profile critical failure” – In other words, it’s attracting bitchy articles in places like Media Guardian and the Sun because it’s soooo bad that it’s widely seen as a turkey.
2) “Achieved low ratings” – Low ratings must be markedly so low that, again, they attract comment elsewhere.
3) “Suffered radical revamps” – This should be for situations where clearly a flawed format prompted a radical re-think in series 2 (with the emphasis on “radical”).
4) “Pulled or rescheduled before the end of the first series” – A noticeable and marked rescheduling to a different time and date, particularly when an 8.30pm show is shuffled off to the dark reaches of 10.35pm.
I think LOASN could be a flop because it was noticeably poor (both in production and ratings) rather than mediocre.
David above has given the UKGS answer, and I’m reasonably convinced that all of the entries in the Category:Flops meet at least one criterion.
Des wrote,
any show that gets more than one series cannot really be considered a flop
There’s sufficient wiggle room to say that a two-series blunder *can* be a flop, but only if the first series fails, it goes away for radical tinkering, and manages to come back different and yet even worse. Katie Price’s literary career springs to mind, for some reason.
For my money, the greatest flop of all time was Only Connect, the 1998 radio show. On a scale from that to the dependably-watchable Raven, I put:
* Survivor – In retrospect, it made all its errors before the first commercial break. Mark Austin had neither charisma nor gravitas, ITV had hyped the programme too much, and the first part just went on and on and on, so that the commercial break came as a merciful release. Once we got to about episode four, it was clear that the programme was worth watching.
* Love on a Saturday Night – It is entirely possible that I never saw this. Judging by the lack of a UKGS review, I don’t think any co-editors did, either.
* The People Versus – Pacing and the specialist subject gubbins did for the primetime show, as did ITV’s overzealous hype machine. The daytime show could have run and run, and if it wasn’t for the BBC beating The Weakest Link non-stop, it quite possibly could have done.
* Wanted – This needed to be a mass-audience programme, to get the tips from the public and create enough of a buzz. Channel 4 simply doesn’t create mass-audience programmes in eight weeks.
The main reason two of these shows are in Flops is because of ITV’s hype machine, building shows up with absurdly great expectations. Wanted, in particular, was experimental television that did what experiments are allowed to do.
well it was mediocre to begin with, and the deterioated from there. i liked keith, stacey doesnt fit saying words she’s being asked to say as opposed to her own words. the judging panel was almost totally redundant (as a filler, surely they could have spoken to the contestants more.)
franklly, i wont tune in next week.
5.3m for this last night, apparently! Blimey.
Just looking at the five minute breakdown someone has posted, it holds pretty well throughout. So there we are, begrudgingly it looks like a hit.
But lest we forget, 101 Ways To Leave A Gameshow also overperformed when it started before Endemol decided to axe it for being too popular or whatever the spurious reason given was.
The post on DS with the breakdown:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=49478645&postcount=24
5.5m with ITV1+1! Very surprising. Then again, BGT averaged 10.4m leading out of it and it had the football leading into it so I doubt it would have got anywhere near that without that sort of sandwich.
Yeah, almost ten mill for the football. Next week will be interesting.
is 5mil in the middle of a 10mil sandwich not still somewhat disappointing? shedding half its viewers, before picking them back up after says more to me than the fact that half stayed put.
Didn’t I tell you it’d be a hit 😉
I think it’s overperforming and time will be unkind but for the moment Joe you may have this.
I was actually disappointed with it. The idea is actually really good, a singing show which breaks down easily into short, funny “OMG, did you see this on Saturday night?” clips that can be talked about at work by the older generation and shared online by the young-uns. Let’s Dance for _____ Relief works on a similar principle.
The execution, though, like too many Saturday night shows, was lacking. The biggest problem was the games, which were dull and unimaginative. The second biggest problem was the bookings – there were four celeb bookers in the credits and that was the best they could do? The third biggest was that everyone obviously assumed the format didn’t matter at all. It clearly doesn’t need to be Millionaire, but there surely needed to be some reason for it all. Why were the panel there? They weren’t funny or useful. Why was there even a competition if the same charity benefitted whatever happened? Who in their right mind thought a tear-jerking “Cancer VT” would sit comfortably in the middle of it all?
I thought Leigh Francis was quite good, although he hasn’t reached Harry Hill levels yet. I think having made quite a brave decision to book him (albeit one forced upon them when Vernon left “by mutual consent”) they should have let him have completely free reign over the show and embraced the madness. Viewers (kids in particular) can spot the difference between chaos and “organized chaos”. I didn’t think Stacey was anywhere near as bad as some people online are making out. Her job was to be likable and smile, which she did OK.
In short, I was expecting “Did you see that show where Peter Andre was singing ‘Umbrella’ in the middle of a hurricane?” and got “Did you see that show were a talent show runner-up who hasn’t been on TV in a decade was singing while some balloons burst around her?”
Without the football lead-in it’ll probably be somewhere between 4 and 5 million next week, which is still probably more than it deserves I’m afraid.
To be fair, there were bits I didn’t like. Stacey Soloman looked like a rabbit in the headlights. I don’t know whether viewers would find her plain annoying or likeable? The balloon game with Jonathan Ansell was a bit lightweight so they better not do that one again. The drop into the tank was a bit of an anticlimax, probably looks better in the studio than on TV.
The good bits were Keith Lemon, the snake singing game with Jodie Prenger and the studio was quite nice too.
Don’t forget the show Sing if You Can is replacing is The Whole 19 Yards. Last year it was getting steady ratings for about six week (around 4.4-4.5 million). So we shall see if Sing if You Can can replicate that.
I saw it for the first ten minutes, then when I noticed the first distraction was faked, I switched off.
… And one episode when it wasn’t BGT lead-in where it got under two mill.
That was the night ITV had the Champions League final. It was shoved to a 6pm slot where they recorded 1.9 million viewers on the overnights.
Yes, 1.9 million.
In all fairness, Doctor Who only got 4.5m that night (at 6:15pm) as it was a boiling hot day. Still a dismal rating, mind.
I thought it was absolutely awful. But I couldn’t stop looking at it.
Pure ITV rubbish………