Let Me Entertain You (1)
Synopsis
Daytime talent show, in which contestants are given three minutes to do their act, and win more money the longer they remain on stage (£100 for one minute, £200 for two, and a whopping thousand quid for the full three). The studio audience have voting pads and the contestants are booted off once 50% of the audience have voted to get rid of them. Each day's top performer plus the week's best runner-up go through to the Friday final, from which one progresses to the grand final at the end of the series. (In the first series, when they had 45 minutes to play with instead of 30, the top two performers from each day went on to the weekly final, from which two made it to the series final). The last act in each regular show is someone from the studio audience who's been nominated by their "friends" and don't know they'll be performing until they are surprised by Brian Conley during the show.
There's nothing terribly groundbreaking about this format (in essence it's just a toned-down variant on the classic US format The Gong Show) but with the daytime light entertainment genre currently going through a mini-boom (The Paul O'Grady Show, The Price is Right - oops, spoke too soon -, even Deal or No Deal) it's a neat idea to tap into that market with a talent show, and it works.
Theme music
Fiz Shapur
Champion
Matthew Crane, the 13-year-old baritone singer. (Who has a website.)
Inventor
Adam Wood, who also devised Cash Cab.
