Richard Osman has weighed in on what changes he would implement on the new season of Strictly Come Dancing.
During the latest edition of his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, the TV personality and producer reacted to the criticism Strictly has faced since new hosts Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe fronted their first live show together over the weekend.
While Emma received unanimous acclaim for her first live show, critics had some more mixed feedback when it came to her male cohorts.
“Spoiler alert – people don’t like it when you have new hosts, or when you’ve changed anything at all about your show,” the former Pointless presenter quipped.
While Richard claimed he can “absolutely see” why producers have “gone with three people” to replace Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, he also thinks the launch show will have given producers food for thought.
“The producers [of any show] know that you don’t get it completely right the first time,” he said. “[Strictly’s producers] know they’ve got three very different bits of talent there, all of whom can do slightly different things, all of whom will want to do slightly different things.”
Richard continued: “The Johannes thing is interesting because, at the moment, he did exactly what Claudia did which is… you throw to Johannes, the producers have given him two talking points, ‘here’s the thing from the VT, here’s the thing that the judges just said, just raise those two things’.”
He suggested that this became an established way of doing things “because that’s what Claudia is incredibly good at”.
“That’s what Claudia could do – now that’s what Johannes can do, it’s not who he is,” he noted. “He’s a trained dancer, he brings something else.
“So, you have to work out what Johannes does instead. At the moment, they’re [telling him], ‘you do exactly what Claudia did, we’ll feed you these two bits of vanilla information, you talk to the dancer and the celebrity, and then throw it back to Emma and Josh’. But Johannes can’t do anything with that. He hasn’t got anything, so [as a viewer] you go, ‘oh, this is just two bits of vanilla information’.”
He also opined that making the “two-hander between Josh and Emma” was something of an “impossible” task given that one of them is a comedian, and the other is more of a straightforward presenter.
Of the current set-up for Strictly’s three new hosts, Richard added: “I think, probably, that’s not going to work going forward…”
Co-host Marina Hyde then pointed out that it was “assumed by everybody” that Josh would be the one in the space previously known as the Clauditorium, with many critics having already suggested that swapping the comedian and former pro would be a smart move for the rest of the series.
Richard also offered this as an idea, while also suggesting that if Johannes were to present the show from backstage, this might give future live shows some “extra content”, and allow the pre-recorded VTs to be “30 seconds shorter”.
“But I’ve always thought that,” he said.
“I think the one thing [that could change] – but they know this already, they don’t need advice – Johannes needs a slightly different role in the Clauditorium,” he reiterated later in the conversation. “He needs not just to be fed what Claudia used to be fed, because Claudia would turn that into something.
“Johannes needs something a bit more It Takes Two, where you go into some of the technical details. I don’t know if he can do the emotional journey in the same way Claudia can, or the comic stuff in the same way, or the diffusing of the tension.”
“But he can do other things,” Richard concluded. “If I was a producer, I’d be excited.”
As ever, the first live show saw each of the celebrity contestants performing with their professional partners for the first time, with no elimination taking place.
Strictly is set to air its annual Movie Week special a week earlier than usual this weekend, after which the first two contestants will compete in the dance-off, one of whom will subsequently be sent home by the judges.
