![\"\"](\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_qNff_ayROXI\/TKl-vXk-1tI\/AAAAAAAAAGE\/-nrGmWGBpy0\/s1600\/earthdefence.jpg\")
<\/a>It\u2019s not really the Strictly set, though, it\u2019s the Earth Defense Directorate from Buck Rogers. Or at least it was when Michelle Williams and Brendan Cole danced.<\/p>\nBruce maintained that Michelle Williams was the finest singer with the surname Williams, only as a gag against Robbie but unthinkingly also forgetting both Andy and Dar. <\/p>\n
But then Bruce also inadvertently set up the most tellingly ambiguous comment of the weekend. After his spiel about the judges being average, Len told Jimi Mistry that \u201cthere was nothing average\u201d about his dance. Breath was held, but he meant it as a good thing.<\/p>\n
Which is nice. Even nicer is how we can already disagree with the judges. How they are already seeing different dances than we are. If you watched with someone else, how often did you turn to look at each other and say \u201cEh?\u201d A clue: it would be exactly the same number of times we saw standing ovations.<\/p>\n
Nobody warranted a standing ovation, few were very good, some were terrible. You knew Paul Daniels was in trouble from the start when his wee little magic trick would\u2019ve had three-year-olds shrugging.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t bad enough to stop your mind wandering during his dance. And he\u2019s not good enough to get your mind wondering if he\u2019s going to win. Ola Jordan will be available for bar and bat mitzvahs from about week 2. She\u2019ll provide her own costume, but you may not be able to spot it.<\/p>\n
It is startling how often the costumes in Strictly cause problems. Kara Tointon must have true precision dancing skills the way the poor woman managed to catch a heel in material as thin as superstring. And that after having her entire personality erased by the makeup and hair styling department.<\/p>\n
Erin Boag, Felicity Kendal and Katya Virshilas got the best out of the costume department while Flavia Cacace did best by the hair stylers with gorgeous vivid red streaks in her dark hair.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a man at all, am I?<\/p>\n
I did spot that thing with the camera angles.<\/p>\n
A couple of things to tell you. There\u2019s no Strictly blog on RadioTimes.com<\/a> this year, that\u2019s why I\u2019m waving at you from here, but there is a lot of very good Strictly material on that site. I\u2019ve just cut a series of videos for there showing the celebrities and their professional partners posing for the Radio Times covershoot. You can see that, plus the photos and considerably more at radiotimes.com\/strictly<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whereas I just went to bbc.co.uk\/strictly<\/a> to check the spelling of Katya Virshilas\u2019s name and the spangly new site has remarkably off-putting photographs. Someone at the BBC has discovered Photoshop\u2019s Sketch and Stylise filters. They must be stopped.<\/p>\n Is that harsh? Am I obsessing too much with the new set and Flavia\u2019s hair? As soon as I can figure out how to do it, I\u2019m switching off the thing that means you have to register to shout comments at me here. This does mean we can expect a lot of offers for sex aids and financial windfalls, some written in Chinese. But if we just ignore them, they\u2019ll go play somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" True, Saturday\u2019s show wasn\u2019t as good as Friday\u2019s but this is already a better series than last year\u2019s. Enough so … Continue reading