The Nation’s Favourite Dance Moments

There are times, I’m sure you will remember them fondly, when new stars loom in our televisual firmament almost daily. We enjoyed one of those in April, for example. Ah, April… and then there’s this week. We know we’re in trouble when a BBC highlight is entitled The Hoff’s Best Dance Film Ever (BBC Three, Monday at 10pm). Trepidation can only increase when ITV is airing The Nation’s Favourite Dance Moments (Saturday at 8.15pm) in the same week.

I’m all for dancing – it stimulates the metabolism and promotes social cohesion. But these portmanteau shows that glue together clips that we’ve seen googolplex times before are among the weakest of formats. They’re often decried as ‘cheap’ TV, but even that isn’t especially true. Rights to broadcast the clips need to be secured and the parade of not conspicuously successful stand-up comics need to be furnished with sandwiches and mineral water through the day. It’s creatively redundant. A way of filling a vast acreage of airtime without offering one new idea or even a new twist on an old one. Still. That’s what’s new this week. And I’m here to tell you about what’s new on telly. However feeble it might be.

And my word, The Hoff’s Best Dance Film Ever is feeble. These shows are excusable if they display a love, or at least a respect, for their subject. From the moment that the somewhat over-animated figure of David Hasselhoff wobbles on to our screens, this one’s a stinker.

Some of the talking heads are vaguely familiar — Craig Revel Horwood, Martine McCutcheon, Rich Fulcher – but they are accompanied by a liberal sprinkling of neophyte stand-ups.

After each frustratingly short clip of a cinematic gem, such as Singin’ In The Rain, Pina or All That Jazz, an ill-informed junior comic airily avers that the 1970s clothes in Saturday Night Fever are a touch old fashioned or that the (actually true) plot of Footloose is improbable.

Portmanteau shows may work as a sort of musical wallpaper while we’re chatting, or ironing, or enjoying a refreshing cocktail but The Hoff’s Best Dance Film Ever is marked for inclusion in the list of Moran’s Worst TV Clip Shows Ever.

The Nation’s Favourite Dance Moment isn’t exactly classic television, but it’s certainly the Greatest Dance Clip Show Of The Week. By contrast to its BBC rival it cares about its subject. There’s the standard array of pundits, including Craig Revel Horwood’s Strictly colleague Len Goodman, but there’s comment too from some of the choreographers and dancers involved in the original dances. The clips are still too short, but in a week where the lowest common denominator seems to be the target, ITV hits it dead on.