BBC Strictly needed a bold line-up for its 20th year - but it's ended up with vanilla wokeness, opinion by Alex Davies
The BBC Strictly 2024 line-up has completely missed the mark when the Beeb desperately needed a bullseye
BBC
August has arrived and with it has come the annual drip-feeding of which famous faces will be heading to the BBC Strictly ballroom this year.
Diehard Strictly fans each year wait with bated breath to learn the identities of the celebs that'll be donning their sequins - that is, of course, if you can't be bothered to just look up the full line-up leaked in the tabloids.
And for a show that has spent a year marred in controversy, scandal, and more mention of 'saga' than an over-50s travel catalogue, this series presented the perfect opportunity for Strictly to return with a bang.
Not only has it endured a rollercoaster year reminiscent of Thorpe Park, but the 2024 series marks the 20th anniversary of the nation's favourite Saturday night dance competition - a chance for a celebration to mark two decades of glitter, toe-taps and Craig Revel Horwood's thinning hairline
So what better way to put the chaotic "misconduct" storm of 2024 behind than unveiling a bumper line-up of well-known, recognisable, hugely popular, A-list faces for fans to watch get to grips with a Waltz?
Unfortunately, Strictly bosses appear to have decided against that.
BBC Strictly 2024 line-up: Toyah Willcox has signed up to star
BBC
The BBC show has come under fire before a single celeb can jump into the arms of their professional partner for the first time due to the calibre of stars it's decided to sign up.
There's a Love Island star with a history in dance training - even though the ballroom used to be a 'no-reality-TV-star' zone and inevitable advantage rows would follow.
There's a TV doctor who fans quickly pointed out didn't even have a Wikipedia page.
There's the bloke from the Go Compare ads, a token EastEnders actor, the fourth most recognisable member of four-piece boy band JLS, and (reportedly at the time of writing) Nick Knowles - a man who I had to double-check hadn't participated in it before.
BBC Strictly 2024 line-up: Olympian Tom Dean let slip about his inclusion while in Paris
BBC
If the BBC had a quid for every time a fan wrote the word "who" under each of its announcements, it may have enough cash to bag a big-name star that it desperately needs.
The line-up in full - although a handful are still to be officially confirmed by the BBC at the time of writing - consists of Jamie Borthwick, Tom Dean, Tasha Ghouri, JB Gill, Shayne Ward, Sam Quek, Wynne Jones, Toyah Willcox, Pete Wicks, Sarah Hadland, Dr Punam Krishan, Montell Douglas, Nick Knowles, Chris McCausland and Paul Merson.
If you think it's male top-heavy, you'd be right, but that's to be expected given most of the show's professional male dancers spent last year grinding their female celeb partners down with an iron fist - or iron boot in the case of Graziano Di Prima.
But the Beeb has decided the best way to deal with the reputational damage Strictly has endured is to unveil this line-up of vaguely familiar figures before announcing the findings of its investigation into the misconduct alleged by Amanda Abbington and others.
Hannah Waddingham had been heavily linked with the show but was nowhere to be seen in the line-up for Strictly 2024
GETTY
Personally, I quite like a few of the picks as a fan of their work; Merson is a popular figure among football fans like myself, Dean and Quek have achieved incredible success on the global sporting stage, and McCausland is a brilliant comic.
But they're not Strictly 20th-anniversary standards. They're all incredibly safe, nod-when-you're-told, appease-Beeb-bosses picks.
Why not push the boat out for the two-decade extravaganza? Hannah Waddingham was one name heavily rumoured to take part and what a signing that would've been.
Even if bosses were keen to tick the trashy-reality-TV box, Tommy Fury had been rumoured to take to the dancefloor and with the greatest of respect to Ghouri, that would've been much more of a coup by some margin.
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And why sign up the second fiddle to Miranda from Miranda when the actual Miranda wouldn't have been that hard to tempt?
When the BBC needed Strictly to start grabbing headlines for the right reasons, its line-up has proven to be a huge missed opportunity.
There didn't need to be any controversial appointments per se but by going with unremarkable picks that'll appease the woke and PC masses that'll tune in on Saturday evening, they may have inadvertently ruined any chance of seeing the show live on beyond 20 as viewers may decide they've had enough of bland safety.
When the presenter of DIY SOS is the pièce de résistance of your cast, it's time to admit defeat.