Marie Phillips

Well. If that wasn’t the nadir of Strictly Come Dancing, I hope that I am absent when that nadir comes. It seems unlikely, as I have apparently committed to reviewing every dance of every episode until the end of time, but maybe as a mark of gratitude for my loyalty, if the production team see a worse episode than this coming, they could slip me a note, and I could spend the hour and a half in a more pleasant activity, such as quietly reading a book, or gouging chunks of flesh out of my arm with the blunt, dirty point of a set of compasses.

This Halloween special was no style and no substance. The whole thing was drenched in stupid “spooky” gimmicks, masking in stage make-up and dry ice the fact that almost none of the dances had any actual dancing in them. Why try to make a celebrity with two left feet learn a routine when you could just dress them as a bat and suspend them from the ceiling? I could count the dances I enjoyed on the fingers of one hand of a member of the yakuza, with a couple of fingers left over to flick a V sign at the production team. The cumulative effect was like being pinned down and force-fed orange candyfloss. Meanwhile the judges raved about all the mediocre dances, just in case the audience noticed it was all crap and switched over the X Factor, which only served to make the whole thing more infuriating. Barely worth writing about at all.

But if you insist -

Russell and Flavia, samba. After announcing all week that ‘I am the samba!’, Russell puts in his weakest performance, just sort of jumping up and down and shimmying a bit in a devil’s outfit. There’s a terrible moment where he plays bongos on Flavia’s front, reminiscent of THAT Gary Rhodes routine. NEXT.

Chelsee and Pasha, tango. This might have been a decent routine, who knows? It was waist-deep in dry ice, so we couldn’t actually see anything. NEXT.

Audley and Natalie, jive. Audley can’t dance. Solution? Make him stand at a piano pretending to play it, which Natalie leaps around dressed as one of Carmen Miranda’s more flamboyant hats. NEXT.

Alex and James, paso doble. You’d think from the judges’ ecstasy that this was the second coming of the paso doble messiah. Instead: Alex walks around, waves her arms in the air a bit, swishes her skirt, walks around a bit more. NEXT.

Holly and Artem, American Smooth. Now, on a level of personal taste, I hated this. I adore the American Smooth when it’s all 1940s glamour, Fred and Ginger style, so doing a naff 1980s ballet routine to Swan Lake is not going to float my boat. Thus, NEXT. However, by the time I got to the end of the show I was so grateful that somebody had actually attempted a routine with proper dancing in it that I have had to reassess, and therefore I have awarded a retrospective pass.

Nancy and Anton, rumba. NEXT. NEXT. NEXT.

Harry and Aliona, or ‘Halitosis’ as I have taken to calling them, tango. Surprisingly promising at the start - I actually liked the dancing with masks in hand, though just chucking them into the audience was a bit odd - this quickly revealed itself to be what my friend Kate points out is Aliona’s only choreography mode: basic steps with very little for Harry to do, an embarrassing sexy bit on the middle, and a horrifying moment of theatrical nonsense that ruins everything (today: he “kills” her). Alesha gives it a ten. What the actual fuck. NEXT.

Robbie and Ola, paso doble. I actually called Robbie to win it last week! Ha! I withdraw that unreservedly. This is terrible. He stomps around a bit, does some horrendous Michael Jackson crotch action, and then finishes up by jumping onto the judges’ desk and, as Tess - rare good joke alert - puts it: “You nearly had Craig’s eye out. With your knee.” NEXT.

Lulu and Brendan. She flies in and out on a wire. (This was obviously tough to justify on the budget, so they also used it to lower Craig in on a broomstick. HA HA BECAUSE CRAIG IS EVIL HA HA.) They then do a paso to Highway to Hell. I don’t remember much of it, but I do know that Brendan has to do a lot of it by himself so that the crew can get Lulu in and out of her harness. NEXT.

Lastly, and thankfully not least, Jason and Kristina doing a quickstep to Bewitched. This is actually quite a charming routine and Kristina manages her nose wiggling to perfection. It’s a huge (quick)step up from Jason’s paso last week and streets ahead of almost everything else tonight. Does it deserve a ten from Alesha, making it a better dance than Chelsee and Pasha’s last week? No, it does not.

And that’s it. Truly a dire episode. Drop the gimmicks and sort out the dancing. NEXT.