What have they done to Top of the Pops? It's been moved to Sunday evenings which is fine, but it seems to have become a strange amalgam of the old Top of the Pops, and TOTP2 which played clips of old songs. So this week, for example, we had clips of Madness and Take That, for no obvious reason.
The presenters were Fearne Cotton, who annoys me more and more each time I see her, and this week Phil Jupitus who was filling the guest role. Next week, we're promised Jeremy Clarkson, which should be entertaining I suppose.
A recent on-air announcement suggesting ticket availability suggests that TOTP isn't quite the must have ticket it once was. And that's not surprising given the number of pre-recorded segments that fill the show (not least those old songs). I'd hazzard a guess that the audience only got to see around three or four artists, if that.
And for some reason, they intersperse the show with "sweepers". These are those should audio jingles you hear on radio stations that help convince you that you made the right choice by listening in. Very strange to see them on TV, sometimes overlaid on top of a song's intro. It might work on radio, but it's completely wrong on TV.
Then, in the middle, there was quite possibly the poorest interview I've ever seen on television. The stars of the new film Fantastic Four were in town to promote the film. All four of them were sat on a chair as Cotton asked each of them a question in turn. What exactly is the relevance of a comic book film adaptation to chart music? You might well ask. Well there's a soundtrack to the film, so we got a clip of one of the singles from the film but that was it.
That meant that the questions were somewhat awkward, as Jessica Alba, Ioan Gruffudd and all struggled to play ball. The worst was the question reserved for Michael (Vic Mackey in "The Shield) Chiklis who was asked if he'd caught any of the live music on in the UK recently. Well given that he's obviously on a whirlwind tour of the world promoting the film, this was going to be unlikely in the extreme. As it turned out, he'd literally just arrived from the airport. Then one of the other cast members mentioned that they could hear REM from their hotel room (Park Lane per chance?) last night. Chiklis' eyes lit up until Cotton let him know that it had been for one night only and he'd missed it. It was coe-turling. (It does highlight once again the lack of appropriate chat shows for Hollywood stars to appear on in this country. There's Jonathan Ross for around 13 weeks a year, Frank Skinner occassionally and that's about it. You have to drop down a level and do a T4 Special, GMTV or Paul O'Grady. That would explain why the other week Vince Vaughan was on BBC Breakfast of all things, plugging Wedding Crashers).
And of course the new number one has only just been announced as they go on air. So we get James Cannon doing a top 10 rundown of both albums and artists, probably live, although it's unclear if any of the rest of the show is live. Cotton kept mentioning that this was the first time the chart had been given to us on TV since it'd come out - probably because CBBC stopped their chart effort a while ago. But running the show immediately after the charts does make booking the number one act a bit tricky. This week it was James Blunt, and they'd obviously got a performance on tape on a TOTP stage. I guess that if they don't they'll use the video in future. Somehow the effect is reduced.
Still, good to see that there's no "live" nonsense, with Banarama (yes - they're back seemingly), performing with just a couple of mikes and no "band" or anything.
Overall, a pretty shoddy production really. I really can't see it kicking any life back into the brand.