Nothing but respect for *my* Queen.

Never ask a man his salary, a woman her age or Shirley Ballas where she keeps the Little Shoes.

This week is a momentous occasion and not just because Lawrence Robb is showing hole

it is in fact the first time in Strictly History that every couple has been able to participate in a Themed Week because Movie Week is landing a week earlier this year… yay…?

and of course we can only start Movie Week with one of the most culturally significant cinematic experiences of the last year with a dedicated character for each professional dancer to play, Christopher Nolan’s Odys-

oh, well, we’re truly never beating the furry allegations on this show

a lot of people online seemed quite confused as to what Zootopia is, which makes sense because I hang out on Bluesky where nobody is young enough to not have chronic back ache. I don’t think there’s really much to get except watching it might explain why Neil has been turned into a sloth by someone who has never seen a sloth before and thought Jared Leto was the next best thing

But yeah, it’s pretty much just furry bait (complimentary) – I mean you’re not putting in a tiger that looks like he’d treat you well for nobody

they did this *after* Kellogg’s had to shut down Tony The Tiger’s social media accounts because people were being too horny for him – I love being online! Unfortunately the tiger catsuits don’t to do justice to he who has been dubbed “daddy train tiger” and Jowita is sort ground zero for animal ears this year

it’s more successful when she’s a rat, aided by the fact she is basically mouse-sized

the Judy Hopps rabbit ears kind of just make it look like Helena Bonham Carter joined the police force. I could recognise most of the characters though, save for maybe Amy(?) who just looks like you bought Tabby off of Shein

which is at least a change from the baffling cacophony of last year’s Minecraft dance that made me want to eat Lego with a knife and fork

I can’t imagine that Johannes was too upset about not getting to be a llama again this year, or in the case of Aleksandra, Just Blue and Wiggly™

however, he did watch the Devil Wear’s Prada routine from the balcony like squidward watching Patrick and Spongebob playing

I really thought it was Johannes that was coming through those doors to do a cunty little runway walk in his incredible Results Show outfit

but alas, it seems the rumour that Johannes was still somewhat involved in the professional routines isn’t true. I don’t even really know if that was a rumour? Am I making that up? Did I dream it? It’s sometimes hard to tell – did I really see the return of the Medium Sized White Horse or am I still on the first rung of the grief ladder?

close enough, welcome back My Boy™

unfortunately there were not enough opportunities for a horse (horsepportunities?) this Movies Week, save for the travesty of not dressing Vito up as Bullseye instead of Woody for his and Lacey’s quickstep

the jeans did make up for it (a sentence nobody should ever really say about a Quickstep)

As did changing the entire tempo of the beat to force it into a Quickstep shape instead of the Rumba the song is best suited. And yet the Toy Story rumba would hardly be the weirdest Rumba we’ve ever seen. Or even the weirdest dance this episode because what do you *MEAN* you’ve turned the underwear dance from Risky Business into a FOXTROT???????

what happened to the Foxtrot being the Rolls Royce of the dance world? This is just a clown car of mess! I know it’s not really Dianne’s fault that they ended up Foxtrotting in y-fronts but by at least Wednesday you have to realise that Will’s wiggling on the couch just looks like someone threw an Atlantic salmon into a residential care home and you have to take some responsibility for that even if Tom Cruise did it in the movie

and yes, when there is choreography in the movie, I’m sure the professionals are pressured to incorporate it but my God if Dianne hasn’t made a habit of being at the scene of the crime for some of the most wretched choreography you’ve ever seen on the show

but guys, don’t worry, it’s definitely all very sexy!

dost thou feel the sex?

the problem for the judges was not however slapping a bumper sticker on a Phantom IV but more so that whenever he was in hold he looked like he was having his entire soul pulled out of his rectum by some unseen entity

I cannot quite express the ferocity with which I hate this routine, I would genuinely go as far as saying that, choreographically, it is easily one of the worst the show has ever had. But you get to the end of it and everyone’s going barmy for it and I start to wonder if maybe I’m a psychopath that doesn’t experience joy? So I watch it again – I’ve been trapped in this loop for DAYS and every time I get to Will convulsing on that couch like a marine iguana suffering from cramp, it makes me want to put my hand in the toaster

the judges were more coherent in their critique, mostly. Shirley thought he was a little too flat-footed so we got the first instance of Shirley’s Little Shoes that she slammed on the desk like she was presiding over Dance Court and was sentencing Will to a life sentence with no chance of parole – Dianne gets off lightly for just aiding and abetting

this does of course mean it’s officially Strictly Come Dancing now and not just Sparkling Appearance Fees! We were hitting all the Shirley bangers this evening – Shoe Wars: Return of the Jazz Shoes, this accidentally devastating critique for imminent Bottom Two Goddess Jaime Winstone (lol)

Shirley’s Seven Peas

Practice, Perfection, Porridge, Paddington, Precision, PUMP IT! (LOUDER!) and Princess Nikita

and lastly, to complete our Shirley Ballas Bingo, getting out from behind the desk to give an extremely patronising hug to someone that should probably be wearing a “No petting, I’m anxious” tabard

I feel like the judging table briefly slipped into a different reality to have managed to score Shaun’s Salsa a 25

not to defend a Charleston too much but in what world was this better than Sarah and Julian’s Charleston? Except by virtue of not being the 100th Mary Poppins routine we’ve endured as it ping pongs between Musicals Week and Movie Week like a child of divorce at Christmas? I demand a mortarium on Poppins, The Sound of Music and Grease please – I’m tired, you’re tired, the field of free-range Maria wigs is EXHAUSTED

Shaun had improved, I’ll give him that! He looked marginally less like death warmed up in a microwave and the judges were mostly complimentary on his partnering skills. Which is true, he served as a wonderful pommel horse for which Alexis could entirely pull focus from

but… 7s? You saw the rest of it, right? The parts where he danced like Paddington Bear grooving to light jazz when he’s alone in an elevator?

I am glad that Shaun managed to get through, I think it’s a little cruel to have foisted two Latin routines upon a contestant that’s clearly struggling with energy and the ol’ razzle dazzle

I can only hope that he gets dignity in a nicely suited out waltz and not having to worry about keeping someone’s taxidermized guinea pig on his head

and despite the baffling hairline and gentle lean that this wig procured over the course of the evening, it’s not the worst wig! You’d think it would be Tabby in the synthetic pink fire hazard but my God if she isn’t pulling it off

instead the unfortunate dishonour of Worst Wig goes to Melanie and this show having about as much success with styling Maria from The Sound of Music as America’s Next Top Model ever had with recreating Mia Farrow’s Rosemary’s Baby haircut

from the front, it’s not too bad – it’s more of a Jane Horrocks special than Maria but then she turns to the side and you realise why she and Aljaz did not want to talk about it during the week

I’d also be fuming if I was trying to dance to Edelweiss for the memory of my dead mother and you made me look like I could be a member of Jimmy’s Gang from the end of 28 Years Later – put that on the banned Jive list

it is truly a miracle that Melanie was not in the bottom 2 this week because aside from the horror of the wig this dance is nigh on impossible to remember because it’s a waltz to Edelweiss, the communion wafer of dances. There was the sympathy angle of dedicating it to her mum but I think her biggest saviour is the fact Jaime is like Amanda Holden and Ashley Roberts became the same person and Chris Appleton is simply not famous or charismatic enough to rally votes in the early stages no matter how many abs he has

like, no duh the person who only had a Wikipedia entry in Hungarian prior to the show starting is going home first! …She says as though she hadn’t written that Shaun was the obvious first boot last week… In my defence, I didn’t know then that the judges would briefly go insane and decide that Cach and Shaun were dancing Latin to nigh on the same standard

granted, much like everyone else when that 2nd hour of the show comes around, Motsi is just on autopilot throwing 7s at anything that moved, if Delta’s third row husband sneezed he’d have got a 7

unfortunately for Melanie, she was a little too early and wafted around like her version of A Sound of Music had ghosts in it before the autopilot protocol kicked in

but as much as I do disagree with Shaun’s marking, and I might stop bleating on about it now, I would still have scored it higher than Chris’s Baywatcha-cha-cha that moved about as well as the medium-sized static jet ski he came in on

apparently people didn’t realise that there was a Baywatch movie? I’ve not seen it but I did once get really depressed and watch every Baywatch episode (including Baywatch Nights, THE BEST TELEVISION SHOW TO EVER EXIST) in a week while looking into the middle distance, which is basically a movie. Also, we might as well just start doing TV shows here because six of this weeks’ themes count for Musicals Week. Seven if we count Ratatouille: A Very TikTok Musical. Which I do.
Chris’s semi-legal Baywatch themed cha cha sort of goes wrong the moment Chris attempts the knee slide within the first 10 seconds of the dance and just looks like someone piledriving their opponent in a cage wrestling match and does not make it nearly as far across the floor as he should

thank God for him that we were already hitting the limit of acceptability with Will swanging it around in barely dance-appropriate y-fronts so he didn’t have to quick reveal a pair of bedazzled swimming trunks showing off his bruised knees. The most he could do was unsexily unzip his vest in some very whelming thirst trapping

and while yes, it is very having to having to use a communal shower in its grin-and-bear-it, he suffered nowhere near the same kind of mortification Jowita wrought from Jody Cundy

they could sense that Chris wasn’t going to let them put him in a completely sheer mesh shirt for a paso doble and they decided to drop him through the terribly themed Latin trapdoor the second they could, leaving Amy to come to the uncomfortable realisation that… maybe she’s The Anton™ now

she might be out first, but as a consolation prize we can crown her the winner of the baffling training room gear sweepstakes because I’ve been giggling about her The Wrong Yoga Trousers all week

you’d think after Skinnering her last year she’d have been given a lob of a ringer but alas for Amy, Lauren has sort of cornered the market on Surprisingly Good Older Gentlemen

I don’t know if people realise just quite how much experience Graeme has in actual competitive ballroom but safe to say that it’s no real surprise that he managed to pretty much ace this accidentally very ‘Allo ‘Allo waltz

he joins the loooooong list of men out there who have attempted to be Don Vito Corleone for halloween and accidentally ended up looking like they’re hiding The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies in the cellar

but Lauren is also just a brilliant choreographer, which I think is where someone like Amy is falling a little short because honey, what is this Sunday School “My God Is A Great Big God” ass choreography?

granted, it’s easier to do something like The Godfather where basically costume and lighting does all the talking so you can just do a Waltz without getting too distracted by taking your fake lifeguarding duties seriously. However, you can take the boy out of the salon, but you’ll never take the salon out of the boy

The more you look at the roster of dances the more you realise Chris was absolutely shafted by that Baywatch theme and sadly he’ll never get an entry into The Monkseal Safety Sex Face Gallery (I’ve stopped calling it “Memorial” because some people thought he had died, he hasn’t, he just made the wise decision to not be online)

leaving the last four as Lawrence, Chris, Will and Jaime speed-running her induction into Bottom Two Goddesshood

you mean people didn’t like the nuclear levels of theatre kid energy in the opening of her routine that haven’t been measured since Lea Michele got the lead in Funny Girl?

or the training VT that’s predominantly a makeover montage of her and Carlos in Annie’s Ibiza trying on clothes that are clearly worth more than a grand?

diva… they’re going to eat you… better show a little humility

honestly, I kind of have to start unironically stanning someone who is this good at coming across terribly, you have to love an unpalatable queen. I’m sure the theme probably didn’t help a great deal, I would have thought Pretty Woman was on the forbidden list, especially street walking outfit Pretty Woman

much like Will entering the studio kitted out on a full M&S 3-pack special, Jaime did change for the actual routine proper

I imagine it was both because I’m really not sure Strictly can get away with a Hooker With A heart of Gold™ Latin and a little hooch and scooch dress isn’t really built for swinging your arms with the reckless abandon of an orangutan that’s just been released into the wild

who needs projectile hats when you can throw hands like this?

Shirley Ballas’s wingspan being the most dangerous part of the evening despite launching four people into the rafters over the course of the night <3

and Tabby wasn’t even wearing a harness!

what’s a 12 foot fall to someone that’s gone headfirst down god knows how many hills at 140mph? Not having the harness also means your professional partner doesn’t have to spend 10 seconds vamping like they have a gun pointed at them while the hoist technician straps you in for a further 10 seconds of airborne vamping at which point we are well beyond FAFFIN ABAAAAAHT

in many ways, I loved this Paso Doble because, much like someone on the production team, I too am a menace on AO3

but by the time you’ve done the witchy scene setting so that everyone definitely knows that Bethany is Elphaba and Elphaba is a witch and this witch is of the wicked variety

buckled Bethany in for the flight and sent her to the moon, there’s probably less than a minute to cram in as much paso doble content as possible and all Nancy really did was go absolutely ham on the aggressive skirt wafting like it was a war between two fitted bed sheets in a tumble dryer

and so beyond it being someone somewhere’s vanity project of bringing their 24 chapter Gelphie fanfic to life, it’s not really all that interesting a routine and I think the judges were rather generous

they do tend to be a lot more lenient during Movie Week, case mostly in point Cach actually getting away with dancing like he’s troupe member No. 3 in Newsies for what feels like the 735th Grease routine we’ve had on this show – we need to move on, the well-a, well-a, well-a has run dry!

by this point you could at least be doing a really awful Viennese Waltz to Beauty School Dropout – there’s just nothing you can really say for Bad Girl Sandy and Danny Zucchini from Veggie Tales’s Grease at this point

which is why Shirley had to fill another 5 minutes with even more shoenanigans

and I’m going to guess this isn’t the first time Craig has tried to wrestle a pair of shoes out of a woman’s hand

Shirley was still a little questioning of Maddie’s Samba content. I would love for Cach and Maddie to come back next week with a regular, run of the mill Waltz to prove that Maddie is not Brendan Coleing too close to the sun BUT ALAS, they have Couples Choice so gird your loins for 90 seconds of stitched together TikTok dances coming your way

Maddie and Cach the Stallion of the Cimarron, unyolked from the Conestoga wagon of ballroom RULEZ AND LAWZ to run free on the great plains of what Jason Gilkison calls “street” can easily score 9s and a probable 10 from Grandpa Anton if he’s had his sherry. Then they’ll tell them to apply all this passion to his ballroom and latin, give him a disco tango in week 4 and send him packing – we call this Eddie Kadi-ing. Remember when he got the first 10 of the series for this?

Speaking of Couple’s Choice, as well as being the first time we had to endure the first full cast Movie Week, this week is also the earliest we’ve had someone do a Couple’s Choice Routine aside from the condensed Covid series where week 2 was basically week 4 so it doesn’t count and when they had to deploy Greg Wise exploring grief through the medium of disco 2 weeks early because they realised he was not good at this show because he sort of danced like he was looking for someone in the supermarket

the dubious honour of christening the dancefloor with the nebularity of Couple’s Choice fell upon the shoulders of John Nellis who had been given Titanic because it’s really hard to find another movie connected to Belfast that really gels with the Strictly vibe. The 1,500 person tragedy is honestly the best option because it has two things Strictly really loves: hideous accessories (nobody will ever convince me that The Heart of the Ocean is beautiful) and a level of melodrama that really lets Katya give you an Oscar winning performance in fake letter reading

and while this may be “Couple’s Choice” I think much like George Clarke Experiences K-pop For The First Time, I don’t know quite how much of a choice this was for John so much as the producers just decided they wanted to do this bit with Josh, Shirley and a Titanic made with less polygons than Runescape had in 2004

of course Katya had vague nods to this scene in the form of lifts that look a little bit like they’re from the pages of the Cosmopolitan Sex Guide that hadn’t managed to make it to publications

they’re very cool and damn impressive, from both Katya and John but, and this is frequently a problem with Couple’s Choice on Strictly, most of the routine it just sort of running around like a newly queenless colony of ants and then doing a big lift, striking a pose or clapping – so 👏 much 👏 clapping 👏 which is a CHORE because as we have established over 24 series of this show, it’s that the audience cannot be trusted with clapping in time with the music

but I did appreciate the flashes of something new that they tried to bring to the table, even if the polka did fall about as flat as John’s feet in this real grape masher of a jig

I think it was at this time that Shirley knew she was going to have to nip out while Delta slept at the piano to go rob a child of his shoes

this routine was giving Katya a run for her money in every sense – I LOVED the rendering of the iconic Rose dress into this short flouncy number that Katya had

but Delta looks SO GOOD in this genuinely stunning dress for her absolute themeless routine because what do you mean we’re doing the post-suicide grief song from A Star Is Born while Jowita is dressed as a rodent???????

“Guys, it’s kind of looking like Delta is just doing an American Smooth?”
“OK, what if we give her the Cowboy Hat of Eternal Sadness, the most memorable part of A Star Is Born?”

oh Katya thought she was delivering drama with her letter reading but Delta Goodrem had an entire Eastender’s Christmas special worth of angst, character death and GENERALLY EMOOOOOOOTIONS with this hat that looks like someone backstage sat it on seconds beforehand

my personal favourite part is when she chucks it like a pokeball and Kai pops out from just off screen

Sadly ten gallon Pinocchio doesn’t get to be a real boy for very long and by the end of the dance he’s a sad hat again

the bow like she’s just finished performing her run in Prima Facie <3 I love her so much and boy is she lucky Jaime Winstone is around to draw attention from the fact Delta has a very shellacked media trained personality. She’s a great performer and dances beautifully, which will get her reasonably far into the competition just fine, but there’s something of an artifice to her talking heads and on-screen interactions that feels a little bit like someone doing a character study of Joanna Lumley hosting a documentary about The Orient Express and that might inhibit her ability to pick up floating votes once we get down to just 8 or so couples.

The judging for Delta was a tale of two halves – Anton adored it because he loves Sad Lady Ballroom and Craig took one look at Delta’s haunted grief-stricken face as she clutched that cowboy hat to her breast and knew he’d witnessed high art

it’s a rarity that Craig outscores other judges, maybe less so when it’s Delta Goodrem’s audition for 2:22 A Ghost Story For Women Over 40 and this wasn’t the only time it happened, nor the most baffling when it came to Anton randomly taking against Graeme’s waltz – my favourite part of which is Graeme failing to read the room and groaning that he didn’t get four 8s while everyone else is cheering <3

this feels like an ushering in of the apocalypse and all I can say is WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG? Could you not have got here *before* we had to Poppins again?

after last week’s Quickstep going nowhere either stylistically or kinetically, I was very worried for Sarah getting the Charleston but she did well! It’s not reinventing the wheel and she did get outdanced by the chorus line of horrible penguins

did these add anything from anyone? Other than being quite funny when it looked like Julian killed them all with a Mortal Kombat style combo move

it was a perfectly serviceable Charleston-by-numbers and for Sarah in Week 2, I’m glad they weren’t over egging it, with Shirley declaring her to be the most improved celebrity this week having given up on the prospect of Shaun scoring higher than a charitable 5. Well, guess what Ballas

it’s probably a sign I should be winding up this recap now that we’ve come back around to me whining about Shaun’s scoring, plus the rat that operates me by pulling my hair is getting really tired

I see with Jowita standing in front of a bedsheet with a pair of 40 inch human hair bundles in her hands, we’re testing the waters of hilarious comedy VTs again. Sometimes the soft reboot is just 2015 wearing a fake moustache

and with that, I shall sign off to see you in Week 3!