Saturday Service: Week 6

Theme weeks are so often hard work to watch, and Halloween is the queen of theme weeks. Don't get me wrong, just like everyone else I love the hair and make-up and costumes. They team does an amazing job. I love the lighting and the props. But the routines. Oh the routines. They are so often a let-down after all the hype. And I'm sorry to say that this Halloween was no different.

A paso to Phantom Of The Opera could have been a show-stopper, until you realise that Katie & Anton will be performing it. I can't believe how many mistakes Katie made. She looked like she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. It was stiff rather than strong. Just awful. Perhaps the razzmatazz was too overwhelming...

Kirsty & Brendan's Charleston seemed to have lots of running about. The lifts were clunky, and Brendan didn't quite do a good enough job of styling out the missed lift. It was messy all around. Kirsty is definitely attacking the dances more, but she's still not hitting it out of the park.

I had high hopes for Jeremy & Karen's Thriller salsa. It could've been brilliantly bonkers. Sadly, it wasn't really much fun to watch. It was messy, and a bit stiff. I haven't really enjoyed Jeremy's performances since the first couple of weeks. The lifts were pretty good though, at least.

I was worried that having the waltz wouldn't be great news for Anita & Gleb. Being a slow dance with little wow-factor, I was expecting it to get lost in the dirge. I was wrong. The choreography was brilliant. The routine had fantastic musicality. They totally owned it. The only thing that baffled me was the judges' scores. Why is Anita always under-marked?

Jamelia & Tristan's jive (or joive, as Tristan calls it) started well, but very quickly lost energy. The routine seemed to be too quick for Jamelia, she seemed to be trying to catch up. As Bruno mentioned, she needs to point her toes more, they are ugly and hooky. She was also too heavy in places. Like Kirsty & Brendan's routine, there seemed to be a lot of running about and not enough joiving.

Jay & Aliona's American Smooth was nice enough. Jay continues to lead Aliona, and they cover the floor well. I have to agree with the judege's comments about the lack of emotional connection to his routine, though. Technically, there isn't much to fault, but he needs to sell it more now. He's a bit of a Gethin Jones at the moment. He needs to create characters, and think about them. His Big Bad Wolf wasn't really bad enough.

Kellie & Kevin's paso had lots of strength. The routine had too much time out of hold for my liking. And Kellie was pulling some weird face throughout the dance. It was just OK for me. Not bad, not amazing.

The rumba is always a difficult dance. It really is. Not 'this is a hard dance' difficult. Genuinely difficult. So Carol was in trouble right away. The amazing make-up and dress, and a green Pasha were not going to distract us. The whole thing lacked passion. It was ploddy. It wasn't a sexy rumba. It wasn't a romantic rumba. It was just odd. In fact, I can't remember when I have enjoyed a rumba by a female celebrity less.

Thank goodness that misery was soon washed away by Georgia & Giovanni's tango. All credit to Giovanni. Despite the dodgy Ghostbusters theme, Giovanni got down to matter of the tango in good time, and the routine was great. Georgia looked great, and it was so good to see another proper tango. It was my favourite dance of the night.

I really enjoyed Peter & Janette's foxtrot, but I seemed to be in the minority on Twitter. I thought it was a return to form for Peter. Janette's choreography was great, and it picked up the accents in the music really well. OK, so maybe his topline is still a bit dodgy. Maybe I only enjoyed it because so many of the others were so poor...

Helen & Aljaž's samba was very cleverly choreographed. Aljaž worked Helen's stiffness into the routine, which limited the amount of time Helen had to attempt the samba hip action. To be fair to Helen, the limited amount of samba action she had to do was pretty good. It's a very difficult action to perfect, and few celebrities have mastered it, but Helen did OK.

The top two are easy to pick out this week - Anita and Georgia without a doubt. Almost everyone else was pretty terrible, so a bottom two is harder to choose. I think it would have to be Carol and Kirsty (I think I've said that almost every week), but Jamelia, Katie and Jeremy could easily be in the bottom two, too.

Here are the videos...

Katie & Anton



Kirsty & Brendan



Jeremy & Karen



Anita & Gleb



Jamelia & Tristan



Jay & Aliona



Kellie & Kevin 



Carol & Pasha



Georgia & Giovanni



Peter & Janette



Helen & Aljaž