Did You See That

In tonight’s semi final of the X Factor, Niki left the competition. Earlier in the evening she gave a belting performance of One Moment In Time. It sounded rough round the edges to my amateur ears.

Leon was back to his cringeworthy embarrasing worst, but somehow made it through despite some ropey vocals and a stiff first performance, and some terrible dancing in the second. Same Differerence gave us the bullying sob story and are through to the final.  Well, could we have an X Factor final without one of Simon’s acts? It is his show after all!

Rhydian was on top form, singing two of the songs which really his voice is made for: Bridge Over Troubled Water and You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Michael Buble was the special guest, and was terrific as usual. What a swell guy! He got some bad publicity in the week but he came across as so personable and seemed to take a real interest in the acts.

BTW, Dead Dad Niki is a cruel nick name but the makers of the show really seemed to have traded on it, as they have done with any sob story they can find.

What did you think? Did the right person go?

Did you see that? Well the good news is that even if you didn’t see that, you most likely still can thanks to the TV catch up services now offered by the main terresterial broadcasters.

BBC - The BBC has iPlayer, which lets you download selected show from the last week and keep them for a further week. The software and various logins are clunky and it only works on XP, but once you start using it and find your feet, it’s really useful.

ITV - ITV.com has an integrated Flash based video player which lets you watch live TV or selected shows from the ITV archives.

Channel 4 - Channel 4 has launched 40D, which is similar to iPlayer except you get 30 days to download programs and you can also pay for movies and classic show downloads.

The theme for this week’s X Factor was love songs, and the calibre was very high with great performances from all of them.

Rhydian knocked it out of the park as usual with a brilliant rendition of Somewhere, from West Side Story.

Louis criticised Hope for performing a solo artists song (Hurt by Christina Aguilera), with Phoebe on lead and the rest just ooh-ing and aah-ing. Of course the irony of this criticism was that his group Westlife have just covered a solo artist’s song (Home by Michael Buble) with Shane on lead the rest just ooh-ing and aah-ing.

Beverly - despite giving a great performance obviously doesn’t have the same fan base as the rest as she finished in the bottom two -along with Hope - and after a deadlock in the judges voting, it turned out she finished last in the public vote. Being the first act up probably didn’t help her either.

Next week’s theme is Best of British, and Duran Duran will be performing.

It was Week 5 on the X Factor and I was suddenly hit by the realisation that Dannii Minogue is actually incredibly annoying. Her post performance comments all seemed to trail off into some odd voices she was putting on. I wish she’d just give a straight comment without trying to play to the gallery or turn it into a performance.

But back to the performances themselves. Well, it was Disco week which meant there was a massive pool of fantastic tracks available, but somehow some of them still managed to get some duds. Rhydian performed the Village People’s “Go West”. Bit of a boring song in my personal opinion. Dannii said it was hard to find a big Disco track for a male vocalist, but I’d loved to have seen him do something like “MacArthur Park”.

Leon got his first positive comments from Simon with his take on “Relight My Fire”. I don’t think he’s a winner, but the fact I could watch him dancing without putting my head in my hands and cringeing was at least an improvement.

Niki also had to tackle her dancing issues and made a good fist of “Hot Stuff”, which went down well with all the judges except for Simon who said it was a bit “Mum-at-a-wedding”. Niki challenged to get up there if he thought he could do any better - sorry love, that’s not quite how it works. Louis’ other act Beverley again proved she has a great voice with a powerful “I’m Every Woman”.

Alisha should have been on safe ground with a classic track like “Young Hearts Run Free” but I think she just didn’t have enough about her to make it a standout performance. In fact, so little was there to say about her that the judges ended up arguing about her roller skating dancers.

For the groups, Hope did a very credible job with Abba’s “Man After Midnight” and Same Difference did “Blame It On The Boogie”.

After the results had been counted, Hope and Alisha were in the final two and the judges decided to keep Hope. It was sad because Alisha seems really nice but she has never really shone, although her version of Valerie was probably her finest moment.

So Sharon lost her final act. Next week the theme is Motown.

It was week four of the live finals and the theme was songs of the 21st century.

Hope gave a good performance of Back To Black. With reports of infighting, was Dannii being a stirrer by singling one of them out for praise and saying she carried the group?

Same Difference were enjoyably crazy with their rendition of “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing”. I was suprised Sharon took such umbrage at the eccentric staging. As Simon said, “it’s called entertainment”.

Alisha did a very passable homage to Corinne Bailey Rae and could easily pass for a minor pop star herself.

Leon proved yet again that he can’t dance. Give the boy a stall and tell him to stay on it. Louis told him we don’t need another Michael Buble. That’ll be why Westlife have just released a completely pointless cover of Michael Buble’s “Home” then?

Rhydian’s performance of “You Raise Me Up” was certainly the standout performance of the evening.

When the results came in, Andy and Beverley were in the bottom two.

What was up with Andy’s performance? About half way through some weird voice, like an extra terrestrial, to sing some key lines over him. I had no idea if that was deliberate or a malfunction but it sounded awful. His second performance in the showdown seemed a lot better but it was probably never going to sway the judges.

Louis Walsh was shocked Beverley was in the bottom two. I don’t know why - he picked an awful song for her. “Your Beautiful” was number one for a long time. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a well loved song. I think it’s more likely to mean it’s a song we’re all sick of.

What did you think of X Factor?

It was Big Band week on X Factor, and usually that means the usual selection of swing standards, and that was there to some extent but also they threw in some curve balls like Pink’s “Get The Party Started” (performed by Rhydian)  and Madonna’s “Hanky Panky” (performed by Hope).

FutureProof performed “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”, which according to Simon is an Andy Williams classic. Hello? How about some credit for the original recording artist to have a hit with it, Franki Valli.  Louis was in particularly scathing mood, saying the middle three of the five-piece group were OK but he didn’t like the “two book-ends”.

Rhydian’s performance was magnificently over the top. Sounded to me like a few bum notes but I’m probably not qualified to say for sure. Alicia at last managed a performance that had some life about it and was rewarded by not being in the bottom two for the first time.  Same Difference were their usual happy selves with a rendition of “Reach”. They’re always bright and bubbly so its hard form an emotional connection with their performances. Louis said they were destined for panto. I’d say Butlins would be closer to the mark.

Andy did a great job with the Bacharach classic, “This Guy’s In Love” - which Louis oddly called “obscure”. He seems more and more detached from reality each week.

Beverly and Niki made sure the over-25s were well represented with two great performances although Beverly got the better comments from the judges.

Simon said earlier in the night that Rhydian’s performance has the best series so far, but then went on to say Hope’s Hanky Panky was his favourite of the night, which must have meant that was his new favourite of the series. It seemed the public didn’t share his enthusiasm for it because Hope were in the bottom two along with Simon’s other group, FutureProof.

Louis and Sharon both voted to keep Hope before Dannii voted to keep FutureProof. Call me cynical but I’d suggest she did solely to put Simon in the position of having to choose between the groups. He looked like the decision pained him but I think he knows this about making a good TV show more than anything else, and he eventually came down in favour of Hope, thus consigning FutureProof to the history books.

It was week 2 of the live shows and it’s hard to see any real stars in this lot who are any where near the standard currently being set by last year’s winner, Leona Lewis.

As expected, Sharon Osborne was back on the show after last week walking out. Not another cynical publicity stunt? No, surely not.

The common tactic of the judges now when wanting to attack each other is to slate the song choice. So rather than talk about the performance, they prefer to talk about the song choice, ie themselves. What with that and the whole Louis firing & re-hiring, the tabloid tales of rivalry between Dannii and Sharon, as well as Sharon’s walk out, you’d have to conclude that the drama is shifting to the panel this year because the talent just isn’t up to scratch.

That said, I did enjoy Rhydian’s mad performance and actually thought Andy’s version of Night Fever was excellent despite the panning it got from the judges for being just like a karaoke performance. Leon was much better than last week and was working the camera in fine style with his rendition of Michael Buble’s “Home”. Emily tried to put some more personality into her performance and I thought to myself after that I wished she hadn’t. And what was with those mad eyes.

After the votes were counted, the bottom two were Alisha (for the second week) and Daniel. Daniel looked bitterly gutted to be there and hinted he blamed the song but honestly, there was hardly any discernible voice there. Sharon suggested he’d be better suited to a boy band. If only he was still a boy, that may be half decent advice. The judges decided to send Daniel home.

Next week the theme is Big Band - I’m hoping Michael Buble might be the celebrity guest!

Videos from the show….

Rhydian

Leon

Same Difference

I missed The Tudors on Friday night, and it thought it looked quite good so made a mental note to download it from BBC iPlayer. So I had a look on the BBC iPlayer website for it and what do I find? Nothing. The Tudors is not available to download through BBC iPlayer.

So rather than offer quality drama, that presumably we licence fee payers helped pay for, I did instead have available such delights as Dale Winton’s In It To Win It and some dross with Anthea Turner.

The BBC spent a long time developing and testing iPlayer but what’s the point of it if only selected programs are available. Pop over to ITV.com instead and never mind all the iPlayer pollava - just click and watch live TV from the ITV network, as well as recent and classic archives. Perfect.

Last night’s X Factor was a humdinger of an episode with the usual mix of emotions that we’ve come to expect.

Katie gave a good audition and was initially voted through to Boot Camp, only for the judges to later realise they made a mistake - she’d be giving birth during the live finals - and Simon told her they had changed their mind. Her boyfriend was less than impressed.

Johnny Rocco was a fiesty entrant, who prefaced his performance with the question “Do you know Elvis?”. His rendition of Always On My Mind produced fits of giggles from Louis, who called him a pub singer. “You’re talking stupid” said an incredulous Johnny Rocco. Not for the first time, Johnny.

Well, that was an unexpected tea time treat - an exclusive live interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on tonight’s ITV News. Midway through the bulletin, we crossed live to Tehran where a nervous looking Julian Mannion gave the President a soft going over, but even that seemed to get the President’s wick, who demanded to know his inquisitor’s personal opinion, questioned if he was a journalist or a politician and ended by dismissing it for not being an interview. It as edge of the seat viewing and I suspect Mannion was making a hasty exit soon after.