Rating:

There’s been a terrific amount of hype about this new show, “Britannia High”.  They spent weeks advertising it at every available opportunity, but apparently it’s not doing anywhere near as well as they had hoped.  The thing that says it all, at least to me, is the amount of money and time they have spent on advertising and hype, yet the main discussion on-line seems to be regarding the new hairstyle sported by Mitch Hewer, one of the lead cast members…

The show is set in a Performing Arts School (called Britannia High, shockingly), so there’s lots of singing and dancing, so it’s a bit like Fame of the Noughties… Which can’t be a bad thing, Fame was incredibly popular back when it came out.

I think this is where the problem lies…

It appears that they want it to be totally different to Fame and High School Musical, but it seems to fall somewhere between the two.  The writing is more High School Musical, but the overall feel and concept is more Fame… But of course, Fame did it first, did it bigger, and ultimately did it better, which seems to be the crux of the problem.

The idea of the show is good, but the application is all wrong.  The show is supposed to be aimed at a more mature audience than High School Musical, but the script and writing is fairly shallow and two dimensional.  There have also been complaints about the appalling acting, but personally, given the script, the fact that the cast have managed to make their characters as lifelike as they have shows how much talent they must have and how much effort they must have put in, it certainly can’t have been easy for them.

Then there’s the choreography.

I remember settling down to watch Fame, and you always ended up watching the song and dance numbers thinking “I wish I could move like that.” as they tended to have aspects of all different sorts of dancing in them.  Britannia High, on the other hand has fairly average dance routines that are straight from any bog-standard music video, so you’re tending to sit there thinking “I can do those moves already”, which does tend to take away much of the magic.

I also don’t know if it’s the choreography or some of the actors just aren’t great movers, but some of them manage to look so stiff during the dance numbers, which again is quite a let down for what could have been a really well done show.

The final negative point is the size.  Everything is so small.

Even after all these years, I still remember some of the big dance numbers from Fame, where dozens of kids would fill the canteen, or they’d be out in the streets and the whole area would grind to a halt as they took over every part of the set.

Britannia High is clearly never going to be able to do those big numbers.  The classes only seem to contain about 15 kids, the canteen number they did this week (episode two) couldn’t have had more than about 20 people in it and the set was so small they looked like they were on top of each other.  It just serves to make it all very small scale and anti-climactic, which is such a shame given how much work will have been put into it.

Other than the likeability of most of the cast, and the amount of effort they clearly have put in, the only other redeeming feature of the show is the music.  Most, if not all, of the songs have been written by Garry Barlow of Take That, who is obviously extremely talented.  They are very catchy pop songs, and seem to be the only reason people are continuing to watch the programme.  So far only two of the cast have done much in the way of lead vocals, but they have done them well, one girl in particular has a lovely sound to her voice, although with the songs being so “pop”ie her voice does seem a little wasted on them in places, I’d like to see them give her a nice strong ballad to sink her teeth into.

I have to admit, I rarely buy soundtracks, but I have already pre-ordered this one for when it comes out in a couple of weeks.  I may even buy the DVD, simply for the tracks that aren’t included on the CD, as there are many that don’t appear to be listed.  However, I don’t see there being enough people doing that to manage to keep Britannia High alive to see a second season.