All Together Now
BBC1, Saturdays, 7.15pm
BBC talent shows these days tend to be very jazz hands. Last year’s Pitch Battle was a relentlessly theatrical competition in which singing groups literally waved their arms about wildly to try to show how “in the moment” they were. Then there was the Take That musical star search Let It Shine, which was like being hard-wired to OTT guest judge Lulu’s brain for eight weeks. And now we have All Together Now, which has somehow found the 100 most jazz hands-y human beings in the UK, aka “a unique panel of music experts and performers”, whose job it is to judge en masse the singing auditionees. They are led by Geri, or Jazz Hands Spice as I like to call her. The show’s big gimmick is that if these 100 hammily histrionic individuals decide they like an act’s performance, they stand up and sing along. While waving their hands about, jazz-style. The greater the number that join in, the higher the audition scores. Apart from this inevitably leading to a vast display of ostentatious theatricality from “the 100”, it also rather unfairly skews the odds, so that a singer who belts out a rousingly catchy upbeat tune is bound to get way more jazz hands joining in than someone who, say, croons a downbeat ditty like Everybody Hurts by REM. Luckily, the whole thing is hosted by BBC1’S new Mr Saturday Night, comedian Rob Beckett, who shows a heroic level of healthy disdain for the more preposterous members of the 100, and singlehandedly makes the show worth watching. Episode one’s highlight is a weird sudden break in proceedings, so Geri and her mates can go to the loo and/or snack on some houmous. And, of course, rest their weary jazz hands.