‘Britain’s Got Talent’ review: Mett Darcy Oake, Lettice Rowbotham, and Christian Spridon
For its second week of shows, “Britain’s Got Talent” did something reasonably surprising and gave us a program stuffed full of people who were legitimately better than what we had the first time.
The best thing about the show was just that in a word, the episode had variety. Four of the best acts of the night were a singer, a violist, a magician, and a BMX act. This is what we watch the series for … even if we still hate the fact that the show isn’t telling you the contestants’ names on graphics during the auditions like they used to.
Lettice Rowbotham – With a name that is a salad and a personality that suggested at times she could be drunk rather than just hung over, we had little confidence that she would be one of those “so bad it’s good” acts. We knew she was getting through thanks to the predictable editing of showing many bad acts before her.
Darcy Oake – “Canada’s Got Talent” was canceled, so Darcy needs some sort of venue to call his own. This is it! After so many bad magicians on the show over the years, including some that have actually made it pretty far in the season, it’s nice to have one that is legitimately good without debate. Darcy brings a lot to the table: He’s got solid tricks, stage presence, and he also is good-looking. The latter may sound superficial, but it’s become somewhat important in the world of magic.
James Smith – We previewed James earlier this weekend, so there was no doubting that he was going to be good. He’s not going to have this tone forever thanks to puberty, so what is more impressive to us is that he seems to be artistic enough that changes in his voice won’t matter.
Edward Pinder – He is 11 years old and throws knives. Seriously, that is one of the more messed-up talents that we’ve seen. Who learns to throw knives when they are 11? It was talent, but let’s be honest here: We’ve seen much better knife-throwers on the show. The only appeal here is the age.
BoldDog FMX Team – They may be in contention for “first outdoor act to win this show,” at least if they can come up with the same sort of crazy again that they did here. The trouble will be actually one-upping the performance that they give here, since this one was already so good.
Christian Spridon – Clearly, David is trolling us. The moment that we saw a montage of silly acts and it was the end of the show, we knew that the golden buzzer was coming so that he could have some silly pet project that we and him (David is our personal spirit animal) find hilarious, but the rest of the world hates. Christian is that in spades: A genuinely terrible performer who is somehow still entertaining.
Overall, we still cannot really pour on the praise for this episode, even if we enjoyed it. It’s like the show is not even trying to be original anymore. The editing was so straightforward that it may have made some straight lines out there jealous. Grade: B-.
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Photo: ITV