Rock Till We Drop: a talent show for the over-64s? It’s a miraculous feelgood smash
BBC Two’s new reality show Rock Till We Drop doesn’t have the most compelling of premises. A search to find new musical acts, with all the members aged 64 or over, on paper it has the uncomfortable tang of everything that has gone before it. X Factor. Britain’s Got Talent. That thing where Gene Simmons paid a cursory amount of attention to some schoolkids. These are all shows that used real people as fodder for hard-edged entertainment. Doing the same with older people would be an absurdly bad look.
And yet, despite all this, Rock Till We Drop turns out to be one of the most life-affirming things I have watched in years. The series sets out to form two new bands, then train them up to perform a set at the Isle of Wight festival. Tonally, it’s a minefield. Too hardedged and it would have been cruel. Too easy on the contestants and it would have been saccharine. Too lax with Covid protocols and it would have been a disaster. There are a thousand ways to get a show like this wrong, and only one way to get it right.
Miraculously, Rock Till We Drop gets it right. As we meet each new potential band member, we’re told their history. Sometimes they have toiled away without recognition. Sometimes they will have come within a hair’s breadth of fame, only to have an unlucky break. Sometimes they will have been held back by their own lack of belief. On paper, this sounds like a cynical onion-chopping attempt. But in reality, it’s a world away from the cheap sob stories you’d see on shows such as X Factor. Here, they are stories of lives that have been lived. We see the full sweep of who these people were, to better understand who they are now.
There’s a refreshing clear-headedness about it, too. The show’s two groups are mentored by Martin Kemp and Lady Leshurr, who quickly discover that this isn’t just going to be a celebration of later life. There’s an incredible amount of hard work involved and, when the groups start practising together in episode two, it quickly becomes apparent that this will be an incredible uphill battle. A particularly telling moment comes when the festival organiser warns Kemp that the band will have to be good. It’s one thing to put them on stage, quite another to predict how a drunk and sunburnt festival crowd will respond. This is a very good point. Of all the possible climaxes to a heartwarming reality show, you suspect the one people want least is a load of 80-year-olds getting pelted with bottles of urine.
So reality sets in quickly. The chosen few have to learn very quickly how to work together as a band and sound cohesive. Some struggle. There are nonagenarian drummers who have to undo decades of big band style in order to learn All Right Now by Free. There are church singers who aren’t used to singing solo. There is a bassist who, for reasons we may never fully understand, keeps saying the word “twang” out loud whenever he plays a note.
The frustration is palpable. One drummer, a Merseybeat veteran who plays in a wheelchair, struggles so openly with adapting to a reggae beat that it becomes hard to watch. The tension even gets to the mentors. Kemp swiftly transforms into a dehydrated husk as he attempts to keep everyone’s spirits up. Worse still, his musical director, Toby Chapman, permanently looks as if he’s on the edge of flipping out and Whiplashing an entire roomful of pensioners.
But soon, something beautiful happens. As the bandmembers mesh, they start to become the stars they’ve always wanted to be. Seasoned leather-clad guitarists start to look the part. Singers find their voice. Without question, my favourite is Carol, a seventysomething music teacher who happens to be a monster on the bass. Every second she is on camera is filled with total joy and rocksteady competence. The woman is a delight. She cannot be on television enough. The world is a brighter place for having her in it.
This is the spirit that fills Rock Till We Drop. There is so much heart on display that it is a pleasure to watch. It’s still early days, but this just could be the feelgood hit of the year.
Of all the possible climaxes to a heartwarming reality show, you suspect the one people want least is a load of 80-year-olds getting pelted with bottles of urine