Strictly Come Dancing (sometimes shortened to Strictly or SCD) is a British television show, featuring celebrities with professional dance partners competing in Ballroom and Latin dances. The title of the show suggests a continuation of the long-running series Come Dancing, with an allusion to the film Strictly Ballroom. The format has been exported to 32 other countries (see Dancing with the Stars), and has also inspired a modern-dance themed spin-off Strictly Dance Fever. The show has run on BBC One since 15 May 2004, primarily on Saturday evenings. An eighth series began on 11 September 2010. A further six stand-alone Christmas Specials have also been produced, in consecutive years from 2004 to 2009. The show has also done 5 charity specials. Since the fourth series, the show has also been aired on the BBC’s high definition channel, BBC HD.
The show pairs a number of celebrities with professional ballroom dancers who each week compete against each other in a competition to impress a panel of judges and the viewing public in order to survive potential elimination. Through telephone voting, viewers vote who they would like to stay, the results of the poll being combined with the ranking of the panel of judges. For example, with four contestants left, the judges’ favourite would receive four points, second favourite three points, and so on, and similarly with the viewers’ rankings. The profits from the telephone lines were donated to Sport Relief in series 1, and to Children in Need from series 2 to 5.
The show is broadcast live on BBC One on Saturday evenings, and it is presented by Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly. For some of the second series, Natasha Kaplinsky stood in temporarily for Tess Daly while she took maternity leave. The judging panel consists of Bruno Tonioli, Alesha Dixon, Len Goodman and Craig Revel Horwood. Goodman and Tonioli commute weekly between Hollywood and London to judge both the American and British versions of the show simultaneously. Each judge gives the performance a mark out of ten, giving an overall total out of forty. The voice-over announcer is Alan Dedicoat. During series four, an hour long highlight show was shown on Sundays at 7pm on BBC Two, and during series five and six, the results show moved to Sunday evenings, although it was filmed on Saturday and then broadcast “as live” on the Sunday.
The singers on the show are Tommy Blaize, Hayley Sanderson, Lance Ellington and Andrea Grant. The music director is David Arch. Tommy Blaize has been part of the Strictly since its beginning. In Series 3 Lance Ellington and Andrea Grant joined the singing team. David Arch joined in the fourth series and Hayley Sanderson in the fifth. The show is broadcast from a specially constructed set at the BBC Television Centre. However, in the first two series, shows were also filmed at the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool, where the original Come Dancing series was filmed in the 1970s.
In the second series, two shows were filmed at the Tower Ballroom, show five and the Grand Final which was broadcast live on 11 December 2004. In 2005 though the BBC announced that they would not be returning to the venue for the third series due to “logistical problems”. In October 2008, Craig Revel Horwood called for the series to return to the Tower Ballroom saying, “the atmosphere was electric. It’s huge and has so much history. The Tower Ballroom puts a lot of pressure on the professionals and the celebrities to perform to the best of their potential. What a wonderful place to go live to 12 million people. We have got to get the BBC to bring Strictly Come Dancing back to Blackpool.” Eventually, the show did return to the Tower Ballroom, for series 7, where ironically Craig Kelly (who was born in Blackpool) was eliminated. The episode was aired live on 7 November 2009. The BBC has confirmed that Strictly Come Dancing will return to Blackpool for the 2010 series.
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