We just don’t strictly trust anymore

As someone who trusts strictly during the winter months, as others might rely on a 10,000 lux SAD lamp, I had optimistically hoped that once Dave Arch and his orchestra had tuned up and the spray tanners of the southern ‘Had Hertfordshire been recruited and Claudia Winkleman looked wryly and calmly through her bangs, we could start all over again and enjoy it with impunity.

I have maintained, throughout its sad summer of scandal, throughout the allegations and investigations, and despite the dark clouds over the future of this series, that in the fall we would be transported back to a happy, special and safe as the contestants slogged their way. Charlestons or gleefully Quickstepped to “Puttin’ On the Ritz.”

The BBC would clean up its act, it has to, that’s it strictly – bring in some companions, introduce new professionals, stop the rot, and let us be encapsulated until Christmas in this happy and playful little world where I, at least, belong. Many claimed he was doomed, that magic was lost forever. It’s an inconceivable future for me.

Obviously, I was naive. Because our fixation with strictly – which for many years has been hysterical and completely blown out of proportion for a celebrity dance competition – has reached the point where it’s no longer just backstage rumors that threaten to derail the show, but where each episode is dissected to test the institutionalized toxicity of production. Anything that isn’t elegant, planned, or perfect is evidence of nasty behavior, sour relationships, another beer scandal that can’t be afforded.

This time I’m referring to opera singer and presenter Wynne Evans and her professional dance partner Katya Jones, who assured the audience they were joking when, on Saturday night’s show, cameras caught her first moving her hand on her waist, through which it seemed to crawl, and then she lowered her high five and glared at him.

Watch the videos for yourself – everyone else is. In fact, I can currently see the clips playing out of the corner of my eye ITV Newssign that when it comes strictlythe kind of thing that might once have made a tabloid gossip article now rises to an incident of national importance.

The BBC says its welfare team has investigated the apparent tension between them and will not take it any further. Jones said in an Instagram post that “even the idea that it made me uncomfortable or offended me in any way is silly.”

And Evans told his Radio Wales show on Monday morning that he is heartbroken. “Katya and I are really, really close, we’re really good friends and on Saturday night we did a stupid joke. It was a stupid joke that went wrong. We thought it was funny. It wasn’t funny. It’s totally misunderstood.”

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A complicated one. Or believe it, go ahead and keep everyone dancing, because at the end of the day, these couples literally have to touch each other all the time and they develop intense relationships quickly and there might not have been anything extraordinary about the behavior of either party.

Or, like those in the most vocal corners of social media, you believe these denials are the result of a hasty dictation from a panicked production executive trying to avoid another PR disaster regarding the deal from men to women in this program; that before we have heard of “breakups” between couples that have too often ended up being signs of something more sinister; or, at the very least, that Jones is the victim of a nice guy who is rightly being called to the biggest and most public stage possible, the BBC’s flagship family show.

The short footage is uncomfortable, and certainly uncomfortable. And while I think that as an engine of popular entertainment and incredibly influential, scrutiny strictly is well justified, the only conclusion we viewers can draw from all of this has nothing to do with the relationship between Wynne and Jones but with ourselves: we just don’t trust. strictly more

No matter how well-oiled the machine or how shiny the dance floor or how shitty Tess’s jumpsuits are, the famous “magic” of this show depends, in the end, solely on its audience’s belief in it as a place of safe and escapist delight.

This year, we observe in knowledge how much of this escapism and delight has been under false pretenses. And that’s something that’s going to take a lot more than a few weeks of cheery group numbers to forget.