I did it, did you?  Did you make it through to the end of the two hours and twenty minutes of week one of Strictly Come Dancing 2017, which at times felt more like two and a half weeks?  Bravo my friends if you did and give yourselves a Len Goodman SSSEEEEVVVVEEEENNN, if you managed it without the need of a ‘comfort break’ as they call it at Wimbledon(aka watering the pansies)!

Admittedly, it’s very formulaic but if Strictly is your thing then you will have fully lapped up last nights show.  It had everything you would want from a Strictly first week.  It had glitz and glamour, it had some OK-ish dancing and it also had some utterly woeful dancing from some of the celebrities.  It was good to see Strictly back on our screens once again.  In this current era of niche broadcasting, Strictly is one of those rare programmes that is fit for all of the family to see.  Therefore, it is a programme that should be forever cherished by the critics.

Comedy is a vital component in the early weeks of Strictly, and so for this reason alone I could have watched funny celebrities Brian Conley and Susan Calman dance all night.  Brian is full of amusing one-liners and comedienne Susan makes me smile every time that she appears on screen.  It was funny by the producers having this well-known lesbian in Susan, doing the Viennese waltz to the song ‘Mad About the Boy’.  She reminds me of Jimmy Krankie such is her lack of femininity, but I mean this in a really endearing way.  She is totally out of her comfort zone it’s untrue, so this makes me instantly want to root for her.  For my enjoyment alone, I need Susan to be this years Ed Balls, i.e. ‘the entertaining act’ that goes along way in the competition.  Last night she did a brilliant dance with ‘Kevin from Grimsby’, scoring a grand total of twenty points from the judges.

If I reviewed every celebrity from last nights show then I really would be here til Christmas, so I’ll now do a quick summing up instead.  Aston(from JLS), as expected was the best dancer of the night as he scored thirty-one from doing a rather over-confident foxtrot.  I just hope that he isn’t going to wink his way through ever routine like he did here.  The two surprises of the night for me were how good breakfast TV’s Charlotte Hawkins and Holby’s Joe McFadden were. Charlotte did a really graceful foxtrot scoring twenty-two, whereas Joe with his dance partner Katya Jones, did a brilliant jive routine scoring twenty-nine.

Look away now from reading this next bit if you love presenter Ruth Langsford from This Morning and Loose Women.  Poor old Anton has got the booby prize once again because Ruth is to ballroom dancing to what Gordon Ramsay is to vegetarianism, i.e. not great.  I like Ruth and I want her to do well but going off this first week of dances, then I fear she or celebrity chef Simon Rimmer, will be the first one for the Strictly chop next week.  Ruth, did the waltz but did more stumbling about than actual dancing I’m afraid, scoring just sixteen marks out of forty.

I enjoyed the return of Strictly that much last night that for about the first time ever, I even found myself laughing at the usually excruciating comedy sketch/joke, that they insist on Claudia doing halfway through every show with Tess.  However, I am sure I will be back to grimacing rather than laughing at this aspect of Strictly pretty soon though.

All-in-all, a triumphant first week return for Strictly.  Yes, it went on for far too long as expected, but it didn’t drag on as much as I feared it might at the start.  I look forward to week two and seeing more of Brian and Susan, we need to keep them in it for as long as possible! 4/5.