The Rivals

The bodies of Hear'Say were not even in their shallow (but well paid) graves before the ratings war of Saturday night entertainment meant that the ITV execs frantically continued to cling to a formula that brought them lots of viewers, lots of tabloid headlines and lots of money by returning to the Popstars well. However for some reason they felt that they needed more of a hook this time to up the ante (perhaps after Stars and Idol were already out there). So to add more interest to this series, the gimmick was that two winning groups would come out of the contest part of the show ? one all male, the other all female. These two would then go head to head for the Christmas number one single.This hook was not enough to gain my interest but I did dip in and out because it only made sense to me that the boy band would lose while the girls would easily win by playing the sexuality card as heavily as they could. Indeed this is just what happened in the end and I wasn't surprised. I was even less surprised by how quickly One True Voice were removed from view ? although I was surprised by the decision to give them a sombre "ballad" appearance while the girls stole it with their fun song and sexy delivery. I wasn't surprised by the show which, despite this superficial change, remained remarkably the same. The singers tended to repress character and personality and mostly seemed to aim for the bland characteristics that they knew would make their faces fit. It was surprising how few of