Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Britain's Got Talent, Episode 3

I know, I know, it came on on Satuday, so I'm four days late. But this was the episode with the man with knives, so I couldn't not watch, now could I?

We begin in London, where 49-year-old Clare Morton comes on stage and says simply, "I'm here to sing a song." The backing track to Fame comes on and she begins "dancing" around the stage in a ridiculously bad fashion. Once she's due to start singing, things get even worse - she reads the first few lines off a piece of paper and not any of the lyrics are on tune. Needless to say, it's a no. Next is Lee the Trolley pusher, who thinks he can make an interesting act of trolleys. He doesn't. Then we have a girl on the German wheel. Piers buzzes, not overly impressed with her, but Simon challenges him, "I'll pay you £1000 to get into that wheel", which he does, but doesn't do anything. Piers Morgan bottles it, but then again so does Simon from giving him money, saying the idea was that Piers only got money if he spun.

We then go to Manchester, where last year's winner, George Samson, was found. "Actress, dancer and model" (bit kind an introduction, that) Kelly Brook joins the threesome of judges. After a poor start with four girls unsuccessfully trying to integrate baton twirling and jazz saxophone, we meet 10-year-old Holly. Kitted out in a pink tutu and looking very much like yer stereotypical wannabe-ballerina, she says "I'd love to dance in front of the queen because I've never met her before." When she started dancing, I wasn't bowled over, and, just as a bored Simon Cowell was about to press his buzzer, Holly opens her mouth and an amazing voice comes out, singing "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady. Amanda Holden mouths the words along, enraptured, and it's a resounding yes from all involved, including the audience. We then see a short montage of some of the other successful acts, ones I would have liked to have watched in more detail.

Next, we're introduced to DJ Talent, a bloke who works for an engineering company during the day, and shadows as a DJ during the night. His rapping/DJ-ing is... amateurish, to say the least, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for him, which is probably why he gets a yes; it couldn't be for his rhyming skills - rapping "Talent" with "Talent" is cheating.

After that is probably the most terrifying thing I've seen on pre-watershed TV (aside, perhaps, from Hilary Duff's attempts to act) - a man that balances himself on two knives and inserts a third one into his throat. OMG. It was terribly tense watching, especially as his arms were shaking and one just didn't feel entirely safe for him. When his body falls down into the knife, Piers chooses this exact moment to press his buzzer, which evokes screams from Amanda, and one wonders if he's injured himself. As a matter of fact, he's fine, but his act really isn't, and he's told to go on.

We move to a lighter note - The Synth Sisters, five 12-13 year old girls who've barely passed grade 1 piano and are trying to make an act out of their "skills." The keyboard playing was turd and their "synchronized" arm movements made it even more lol-tacular. Continuing with the unintended hilarity, is an ex-forklift driver, wannabe drag act. He claims he wants to show the world that he isn't like other drag acts that just mime the words, which is all very well, but his singing is atrocious. So, so bad, that he starts getting booed, and Simon Cowell comments, "Drag acts are supposed to look and sound like women, and you were neither." Piers and Kelly were entertained by the naffness and give him two yeses, but Amanda and Simon are having none of it.

Does anyone know why Kelly Brook was even introduced in the first place? I mean yeah, she did look very pretty, I'll give her that, but in having her on, the acts needed three yeses, so they needed a 75% success rate to get through as opposed to 66.666666666667%, which seems a bit o' a disadvantage to me.

Anyway, we go back to London for the last noteorthy act, which is Diversity from Essex. In them are three or four sets of brothers, as well as four lads that aren't related. As their name suggests, it's an ecclectic crew - University students, IT technicians, Secondary School kids, etc, but they are all uniformed by their love of dance. The music starts with a extract from Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech, and the dance starts. And... WOW. It's awesome, a fusion of every type of dance out there - street, hip hop, rhythm, and everyone is so together and co-ordinates. It's better than the dances in Step Up 2, and that's saying something! Utterly, utterly transcendent, with even a slow bit parodying the Chariots of Fire scene. And thus, we are ended on a high for another episode of Britain's Got Talent.

1 comment:

WatchingStar said...

Diversity is probably the best dance group ever on BGT though I liked Flava last year