Harry Hill to present Stars in their Eyes

I read that Harry was going to film each episode during the week of the broadcast.

I heard it was done on a Thursday before the weekend it was on ITV.

I think with the programme you have to remember it's "Harry Hill's Stars in Their Eyes" and not "Stars in Their Eyes". If you're expecting it to be like the original series you're likely to be disappointed. Though debatable these days ITV has X-Factor as it's 'serious' singing competition programme.

The living room set for the pre-makeover interviews seems to suit Harry Hill's style, and the first two sketches I saw during the interviews were bearable. I'm not keen on the VT's and think it would be better if they were dropped or drastically shortened, as the contestant's acting is rather wooden to say the least. I did like some of the random/surreal bits such as the opening song and the bloke bringing on the result. It was also nice to see an appearance by Matthew Kelly at the start of the show.

I'm guessing by recording during the week of broadcast has the advantage of getting feedback from the previous transmission, and potentially allowing elements to be tweaked.

Crossroads?

Right. I've just watched this for around 10mins dipping in and out on ITV Player - and I'm convinced that it's very well produced hoax/satire of the original series - just enough 'give' to make the viewers to work it out for themselves without very heavy obvious clues.

It really looks like an extended TV Burp 'dream' sequence where he thinks he's in another tv show.

All the contestants in the pre-song 'chat' hardly umm'ed, err'ed or paused. Read and played the script brilliantly. Note in the credits Harry Hill and 3 'additional scriptwriters'. Usually, in the old series Lesley/Matthew/Cat would have had 1 writer do pretty much everything for them under the credit 'additional material'.

The pre-recorded vt insert gags, would with the proper 'real' star guests of old, been borderline offensive to them. And none of them actually sound very much like who they are supposed to be appearing as - something that if 'old' SIYE and TV Burp shared the same schedule, Mr Hill would have had great fun pointing out on a weekly basis.

That said, hats off to Initial/Endemol though. The only way this would have been brought back, with heavy irony added, was to produce it themselves.
Suspect this will be the only series though. Wonder what he'll deconstruct next?

Well, there was Dick and Dom's Ask The Family, of course, ten years ago now, which did very badly. The Beeb brought this on themselves, though, because they anounced Ask the Family was coming back, and then in the weeks before the new series did a documentary on the show and even repeated a couple of episodes in the build-up. So by emphasising the old show like that, when the new series began nostalgic adults tuned in and got that, which wasn't what they were expecting, and complained. Of course, it was never going to be like the old show with Dick and Dom involved. Much as I find it annoying when people base their views on shows on what they think they should be rather than what they actually are, the Beeb totally shot themselves in the foot. They'd have been better off using the format but not calling it that. In fact that might have been an idea with Stars In Their Eyes too.

The interesting thing about Ask The Family is that, like Stars In Their Eyes, they were filming it quite close to transmission and a couple of times during the run they clearly went to a new "block" of episodes where they'd tinkered with the format a bit, so by the end of it it was really quite different from show one. By that point they all knew it had died on its arse, though, which was a shame because it was a fun series. In small doses, perhaps.

Maybe Crossroads Mark III when it became far too camp, even for camp people! But Crossroad Mark II was actually quite good and was getting the ratings and actually had good storylines. Granada (aka ITV plc) were just looking at the quickest way of closing Lenton Lane when they put it on hiatus before introducing the god-awful Mark III

What about that awful remake of Mr & Mrs with Julian Clary?

Just pretty dull, that, they probably played it too straight if anything and there wasn't enough opportunities for Clary to muck about. The great thing about that is that it was on Fridays at ten, one of the first shows to replace News at Ten, and when they dropped it midrun ITV said it wasn't because it dying on its arse but because they were experimenting with the new schedule and wanted to find it a more suitable slot. Three months later it was back. On Fridays at ten.

I notice looking at the first thirty minutes or so of the second episode of the series the show has become much less TV Burp in new clothes and more Stars In Their Eyes for the modern era. The TV Burp style stuff still appears in the intro VT's but has been reduced somewhat for the studio links - still present but not along the lines of the random "grooming a dog in the back of a van" sketch that appeared last week.

Must admit, it seems better this week; it would appear Harry and co have taken on board the feedback from various sources since the first episode.

The first half of the show worked well this week, but the second half just collapsed back into TV Burp territory; the obviously fake dummy, the giant wrecking ball, the "going on a cruise" song with random presence of Mother Teresa, the presence of the ball-pool for the second week running, the Adele's Baby thing was also back again as well...

I like it all.