Last Choir Standing

Yes, it's yet another blooming elimination-based talent show. Put simply, choirs enter, go through heart-rending auditions with a yes/no system, going through to a phone vote where there's stupid eliminations and cretinous challenges. Oh, and there's also lots of Russell Watson fancying.

The thing that ticks me off most about it is that it's presented by Nick Knowles . Why can't Myleene Klass present on her own?

Your thoughts, please.

Well at least it's not Mr Norton.

Didn't BBC2 do a choir thing not so long ago?

They've done two things.

The Choir was presented by Gareth Malone and documented him trying to fashion a choir out of hostile schoolchildren. BBC2 also did Classical Star - basically Britain's Got Talent , but with classical musicians.

To be fair, it looks like Last Choir Standing has potential. My concern is Nick Knowles.

Nick Knowles presents DIY programmes. When he presented Who Dares Wins earlier this year, it flopped. He is not for presenting music programmes. You wouldn't have Catherine Gee presenting Top Gear .

There are 'all-rounders', like Graham Norton, Myleene Klass, Adrian Chiles, etc., who you can throw into pretty much anything and it'll work. However, Nick Knowles is not one of them.

Are Mylene Klass and Nick Knowles the best presenters for this type of show? It's followed on from a potentially hugely watched edition of Doctor Who, do we think it'll keep its audience over coming weeks?

ITV get at lot of flack but the BBC are much worse for churning out these formulaic sh!te shows.

I said on another thread that if you look at ITV's big light entertainment hits, I'm A Celebrity, The X Factor, Dancing On Ice and Britain's Got Talent, that they are all different formats. But if you look at the BBC it's one singing show after another like Any Dream Will Do, I'd Do Anything etc. And these singing shows are middling successes that don't catch on with the public the way that ITV's shows do.

I honestly think that viewers see another singing show on BBC1 and avoid it like the plague. Apart from Strictly Come Dancing BBC1 has no other half decent light entertainment format.

Completely agree with that sentiment, though to be fair Any Dream will Do and I'd do Anything are technically the same series - but as for the rest of the stuff they churn out it's middle of the road crap at best, and as you say apart from Strictly, none of it competes with ITV's big shows.

I'd still say the best BBC singing reality show would be Fame Academy, but they just couldn't handle it, especially when they basically tore up the format and made it into a low rent version of Pop Idol.

We should probably count our blessings though - it's been at least six months since any dance related show on Saturday nights.


P.S. Caught a few minutes of the new Lottery show too - looked absolutely awful, and the set seemed to be something we've seen used before on dozens of other BBC shows.

We are well into crap telly season aren't we ? That Lottery show really was woeful.

Last Choir Standing was ok, but Nick Knowles. WHAT!?

As for the new lottery show, it was a tad confusing with all this "You can swap the ticket for a place in the gold contest" Also, why aren't any lottery quiz shows on the BBC live anymore? In it to win it was recorded AFAIK, as was 1 VS. 100.

You're right about the musical shows, it is essentially the same show featuring a different musical each series. But there seems to be no variety at all in their offerings. I'm wondering if the LCS will move to studio 1 at TV Centre for the main show. That's the other thing lacking variety, for every big light entertainment show that comes out of there apart from Strictly Come Dancing looks the same. The new National Lottery show set looks similar to I'd Do Anything. There's just no variety.

And studio 1 lacks atmosphere. If they have a big audience they can't have a big set, and if they have a big set they can't have a big audience. I'd say studio 8 has far more atmosphere.

Tess Daly doesn't have the style and off the cuff wit to do a light entertainment show like this. With another host it could have worked much better.

I watched the lottery show getting recorded in Glasgow. Took almost 3 hours and we all had to pretend it was "live" and clap like seals every 5 seconds. Such is life....

Tess didn't seem such a fan of the show format in real life either....