Who Do You Think You Are? Some Kind of “Superstar”?

To celebrate my 17th birthday, my parents gifted me with a 2002 Mini One: 80000 miles, coffee-splattered detail and dicky passenger door. 15 previous lady owners. I remember staring, buoyantly befuddled, at its pedals and dials, nonchalantly twiddling my keys (my keys) and being altogether irked by the presence of L-plates. I snappily signed up for a dozen lessons with the local driving instructor who, fortuitously, as I saw it, used a Mini herself. Lesson One, “Keys”: Jules handed me what I took to be a shiny black whistle until I fathomed that she wanted me to fire up the ignition. Lesson Two, “Indicating”: when she asked me to signal left I clicked on the headlights, right and windscreen wipers would flap frenziedly. Mini, evidently, experiment acutely but principally each time they launch a new model. Each lesson with Jules meant 60 minutes in a tampered-with copy of my own beloved set of bald wheels: a faintly yet discernibly cockeyed version of what I’d reverently studied since bolting down my birthday-cake breakfast. Incremental though the dissemblances were, they hankered my progress no-end. Each time I swapped my threadbare driver’s seat for Jules’ supple leather one I had to remind myself not to be snared by the motors’ likeness and get to grips with Jules’ gearstick as something separate from my own. I hadn’t thought a jot about this sensation for four years until I tuned into ITV1s new talent show “Superstar” on Saturday evening; it embodied that same-but-vexatiously-different quality that I thought I’d bid goodbye when I ditched the provisional.

West End talent show with a twist: "Superstar" offers a bigger prize than its ancestors

The show’s eventual promise is to fill the leading role of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar”, set to embark on an arena tour of the UK later this year. It follows Lloyd Webber’s first few forays into telly territory (“How Do You Solve...” “Any Dream...”) that he has made with the Beeb, to varying degrees of success, since 2006, but sporadically bucks the musical talent-show paradigm. Take Saturday’s premiere: instead of getting things going with what were ostensibly open auditions and a hodgepodge of potential Christs, the opening-night show screened a post-audition callback round in which every contestant was passable. Gone, instantaneously, were the wickedly funny waifs and strays; lost, along with them, the customary gobsmacked-judges shots. The omission of the tone-deafs itself isn’t a sticking point (see “The Voice UK”), but their jarring absence during a show that conforms in listless other ways to the expected X-Factor format certainly is. So too, Lloyd Webber’s weighing up the auditionees via headphones in a side room, emerging only to confer with his lesser-judges (more on them later), struck as senseless. Following their song, the hopefuls were told to await the judges’ verdict backstage: a routine inextricably disassociated with first-rounds on telly talent shows. The format, then, was the T.V. equivalent of Jules’ pointlessly and only superficially updated Mini; it snatched at originality but achieved little more than niggling annoyances.

Out of the spotlight: Andrew spent Saturday backstage

Aside from the ineptitude of the format, though, the show performed pretty well in a swamped genre; its judging panel, particularly, had a Spice Girl-shaped high. Mel C, the only member of the band not to have dabbled in talent shows before now, swerved the awkwardness and inexpertness that too often accompanies novices to judging line-ups. “I think I’d like to bathe in that voice,” she cheekily told one contestant, after telling shop assistant Sam Cassidy that he must disprove her doubts about him in the next round and giggling when a self-proclaimed Spice-fan took to the stage. Mel resisted the temptation to be swayed by her flanking fellow critics, seemed wholeheartedly comfortable dishing out feedback and (critically) wasn’t just there for her glamour, after signing herself up for a role opposite the competition’s victor. Casting director David Grimrod, who has worked listlessly with Lloyd Webber on previous shows, also took to the judging job with skill and upped again the credibility of the lineup. Stage-pro Jason Donovan finished the set but marred his relevance to the show with what were, increasingly, ruefully redundant comments. “You need to be focused. Jesus was focused,” he sagely told a bemused contender, having hitherto offered only “I dunno mate. I really dunno.” Very adroit. Of course, the panel is set to diversify by the time live shows come around with the ever-watchable (if not a little too distantly connected here) Dawn French set to swell the judges’ ranks, so here’s hoping Donovan’s clumsiness will matter even less during shows to come.

Natural: Mel C is the fifth Spice to judge new talent

When filling “the most iconic role of all time”, as the show unashamedly billed it on Saturday, the talent itself is somewhat paramount and the premiere didn’t disappoint. Most notable was the final auditionee of the day, David, who crooned his way through to the next stage more smoothly than his predecessors (and, tellingly, landed himself on Lorraine’s sofa this morning), but he was by no means the runaway star; Rory Wirrell likewise showcased a staggering set of lungs when he belted out one of McCartney’s lesser-known tracks, “Maybe I’m Amazed”, and builder Steve Pipe compensated for his pitiful lack of theatre know-how with his bible-worthy (almost) tones. Jonathan Ansell, of 2004 X-Factor fame and former member of operatic quartet G4, was less lucky when he nailed a performance of “Somebody to Love” (not the Bieber version, I hasten to add) but was told his current obligations to another West End show had hampered an otherwise masterly audition. 

Ansell’s segment, which came about midway through the show, epitomizes a thorny issue that “Superstar”, as a series, will unquestionably have to negotiate if it is to draw audiences back week on week. The show follows a trail of Lloyd Webber shows that, refreshingly, succeeded without the promise of elusive superstardom at the end: a relatively modest stint on broadway was the prize, take it or leave it. Refusing to pledge their contestants long and commercially mammoth careers meant that the Beeb/Lloyd Webber duo did away with the now wearisome artificiality and ostentation that plagues reviews of “The X-Factor” when it returns each August and ensured the silence of cynics to the talent show format. With “Superstar”, however, the coveted role means an arena tour, not a West End jaunt, and the show on Saturday seemed eager to ramp up the drama dial to cohere with its big-promise prize. Cliffhangers sprung up around ad breaks as judges took unrealistic amounts of time to deliver their verdicts, Ansell’s fate was left a blank, contestants only got their answers delivered individually if it suited the editing room and the next phase was marketed as a military-style “Superstar Island”. The show seemed acutely stuck in limbo: should it mimic the theatricality of fellow ITV talent shows, whose end-prizes remain untouchable, or aim for the credibility of Lloyd Webber’s previous programs at the risk of cheapening its trophy? It must settle for one or the other; as competent a judge as she proved herself to be on Saturday, Mel’s likely insistence that “2 Become 1” just isn’t cutting it here.

Last but not least: Could David be the "Superstar"?