CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: Top tip for joining Gareth’s choir – just give it the full Shirley Bassey!
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Blackburn Sings Christmas With Gareth Malone
Ghosts
Gareth Malone has a knack for instilling confidence in everyone. Sometimes, he does it too well.
‘You are,’ he declared to talented but shy 13-year-old Ray, ‘in the presence of someone quite expressive, you may have noticed.’
Ray’s pal Maddison, 16, perked up. ‘Me?’ she asked brightly.
‘No, me!’ retorted Gareth. Spreading the feel-good factor is fine, it’s his job, but choirmaster Gareth draws the line at being upstaged by his choristers.
He was in Lancashire, helping one of the towns hit hardest by Covid last year to pick itself up, in Blackburn Sings Christmas (BBC2).
Gareth Malone has a knack for instilling confidence in everyone. Sometimes, he does it too well
Blackburn, he discovered, likes a singsong. At the Clifton Arms, he found landlady Carol leading a karaoke like Gracie Fields at full throttle.
There were folk waving their pints over their heads, banging the tables and kicking up their knees. Anyone who thinks raves are a fairly recent invention of the young doesn’t know Blackburn.
Over at the hospital they were belting out the choruses, too. Lockdown left professional singer Stephen out of work, so he joined the NHS as a cleaner.
There’s an old showbiz joke that anyone who can sing, dance and act is a ‘triple threat’.
Stephen had his own take on that. ‘I’m a triple-threat cleaner, porter and singer,’ he declared. There was nothing threatening about his warm, transatlantic vocal style, as he serenaded patients with Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, sounding very much like Nat King Cole.
Over at the hospital they were belting out the choruses, too. Lockdown left professional singer Stephen out of work, so he joined the NHS as a cleaner. There’s an old showbiz joke that anyone who can sing, dance and act is a ‘triple threat’. Stephen had his own take on that. ‘I’m a triple-threat cleaner, porter and singer,’ he declared
Paramedic Justin was singing to keep himself cheerful in his ambulance. He choked up when he talked about his work, but newly qualified doctor Yasmin said it for him: ‘We had to adapt very quickly to things that were more emotionally challenging than I have ever experienced.’
Gareth has a clever technique for bringing that emotion out in voices, by getting people to sing in a key towards the top of their range.
‘Give it the full Shirley Bassey,’ he urged Justin, who didn’t need telling twice. The real tearjerkers, though, were Ray and Maddison with the lyrics they added to Silent Night: ‘Last year the mince pies didn’t taste the same, and I wish that Christmas hadn’t changed.’
This was a one-off special, and the final 15 minutes were given over to the concert, including a mass karaoke session accompanied by the Blackburn and Darwen brass band, as the Christmas lights went on in the town square. It meant there wasn’t enough time to get to know all the personalities better, which was a shame. There’s no doubt that Blackburn knows how to throw a party, though.
Alison and Mike (Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smith-Bynoe) were throwing Button House open to anyone in need of an Xmas lunch in Ghosts (BBC1).
A homeless chap called Nicholas with a white beard and a dog called Rudy had set up his tent in the garden. Ghosts can sometimes teeter on the brink of tweeness and this storyline almost pushed it over the edge. Luckily, there’s more acerbic humour to keep the balance. Jennifer Saunders made a guest appearance as a Victorian matriarch in a flashback, selling her daughter into a dubious marriage, to pay off her husband’s gambling debts.
Amoral politician Julian (Simon Farnaby) was teaching his fellow spooks to lie: ‘There is nothing that cannot be lied about or, rather, there is no truth that cannot be avoided.’
His top tip was to answer any awkward question with another question, spoken in an outraged tone: ‘Are you implying . . ?’
It’s all a comic fantasy, of course. Ghosts don’t exist — and MPs are always honest.
Dishy dolly of the night: Quiz shows used to have swimsuit beauties and girls in gowns to show off their prizes. That’s unthinkable today. Alan Carr’s Epic Game Show Christmas Special (ITV) had a hunky male model in a white shirt to do it. Nothing sexist about that!
