After all the hype and publicity that preceded KTN’s second reality show, the premier episode of ‘Can U Dance’ was all but a sham. While everything from the venue’s stage setting to the production and presentation was way below par, I particularly take exception to hitherto impeccable Janet Mbugua’s disastrous performance on the day.
Janet gets all her lines wrong right from the start when she reveals that she is meant to introduce the program host at some point (presumably to hand over the show) but ends up running the entire show all by herself - and tragically so!
Then she goofs yet again when she blabbers that the prize money for the winning duo is Ksh. 100,000. A minute later the figure has suddenly doubled to Ksh. 200,000! Huh!! How so?
And she is not yet done with her amazing string of howlers for just one show. Inviting two anonymous contestants on the half-lit stage to dance to no music was too amateurish. Janet certainly belongs to that league of the exciting new faces that have lately taken over national TV screens but apparently someone didn’t realize quick enough that hosting a dance show isn’t her thing.
The whole thing was one colourless gig staged on a poorly lit stage. It was much harder telling whether the crowd in attendance at the Village Market was actually the contestants, the live audience or a curious mix of the two. Worse was the fact that the viewers were not even taken through systematic highlights of the vetting process during the auditions, just some halting clips that had been used to publicize the show the entire week.
And when the show came to an end it was so abrupt, viewers were left high and dry still wondering what that was all about. It all looked like an act hurriedly put up together in the wake of the Presenter’s immense success. The mistakes were all too glaring even for upstart showbiz critics like me. KTN and the show’s production crew urgently need to up their game on this one.
De Stefano, your analysis of can you dance (or should it be cant you dance?) is spot on. We may be judging too early but the première episode was nothing to write home about. KTN set reasonably high standards with the PRESENTER, they surely can do better with this dance show!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the both of you that first show was a total disaster. I am waiting to see the second show to be able to know what the show entails in terms of what is expected of the contestants and if they can truly get us glued to the program because i was not able to concentrate on the previous one for more than ten minutes i hope that they are able to up their game this time round.
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