The Stage

TV review

Published Friday 28 August 2009 at 15:00 by by Harry Venning

The first two contestants on this year’s X Factor were Dream Girls, Lithuanian sisters who had crossed Europe in pursuit of superstardom.

As the opening bars of their accompanying tape kicked in and we entered the world of the musical unknown, I experienced an all too familiar frisson of excitement. Which would emerge from the Dream Girls’ mouths, the sublime or the ridiculous?

Inevitably, they were dreadful. No way was the programme going to show its hand too early on by revealing potential contenders.

Perhaps Lithuanian music works on a different atonal scale, like Chinese Opera, but the Dream Girls’ singing went down like the proverbial cup of sick. Not just with the judging panel, but also amongst the several thousand strong audience filling the O2 Arena in London.

The introduction of a baying, braying crowd added a spiteful new twist to the usual audition torment, divesting The X Factor of any lingering pretensions to be a talent search and assisting the transformation to fully-fledged light entertainment bear bating. The producers would doubtless claim that they are merely recreating the conditions for another Susan Boyle moment - the moment her voice surprised the world, that is, not the onscreen mental collapse - but everyone knows that The X Factor, in its early stages at least, is all about heaping disdain upon the delusional.

And what tremendous entertainment it provides. There are many levels upon which The X Factor is morally bankrupt, but I’m afraid I was too busy laughing to think of any.

Even the judges felt a bit superfluous to all the fun. Personally, I don’t need shots of Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and Cheryl Cole pulling faces to know how bad an act is. Dannii Minogue, to her credit, remained expressionless throughout, although the reason for that is possibly open to debate.

Timothy Spall looks pretty crestfallen at the best of times. So for Gunrush to cast him as a father who witnesses his daughter’s murder did seem to be over-egging the pudding somewhat.

After a powerful and disturbing start, which made a serious effort to address some of the issues around violence and bereavement, Gunrush descended into overwrought melodrama, with Spall’s grief-ridden character taking the law into his own hands and patrolling the mean streets of the local estate looking for the murder weapon.

By the finale it had all become slightly preposterous, with gun-toting mum and dad out for revenge when their younger daughter is kidnapped by their elder daughter’s killers.

Still, Gunrush was atmospheric, frequently gripping and very well acted. An intelligent script did have some serious points to make about the nature of gun crime, but it all got a bit lost in the manic plotting.

Ten minutes into Shooting Stars and I was grumpily wondering why Vic and Bob had bothered to revive it. Then Vic Reeves showed guest Christine Bleakley a tattoo on his lower back, revealing his seriously soiled underpants in the process and I realised that resistance was futile. Trends come and go, but funny endures.

PROGRAMMES

The X Factor ITV1, Saturday, August 22, 7pm

Gunrush ITV1, Sunday, August 23, 9pm

Shooting Stars BBC2, Wednesday, August 26, 10pm