Must Be The Music - Sky One - anyone watching? Actually quite fun

[wildstrawberryplace]

Watching the ads for this I thought oh no, a crappy X factor wannabe. (Not that I particularly enjoy the X Factor).

It's so much more entertaining! Some really interesting and talented acts and the way the show is formulated and comes across makes you realise just what a bloated, vapid, airbrushed, scripted and boring behemoth X Factor is.

Would recommend on catch up if you didn't see it and like those kind of shows.

Apols if there is already a thread, had a quick look but couldn't see one.

So agree. I switched over to x-factor after watching an episode of MBTM and couldn't stomach it (could hardly bear it before tbh.)

They need to swap Fern Cotton for someone less annoying though. She is no Cat Deeley.

I love the MBTM judges. Such an under-rated show.

Hmmmm

Not 100% sure that this show is not just as scripted as X Factor.

Dd2's choir were invited to audition for the local auditions in May this year. Production team loved them, and they got through to the London auditions.

At the London audition, (it was the one when Sharleen was sick), Dizzee absolutely loved the choir (standing ovation, "I want to see you go all the way to the final") and Jamie praised their musicality and control. They were the only auditionees to get 2 "yes" votes that afternoon (we saw around 10 acts I think).

We were all very optimistic.

However, we eventually got a call from the production team saying that although the judges absolutely loved them, they weren't what they were looking for for the programme.

Reading between the lines, we think that the cost of looking after 30 kids and chaperones (semi-finalists provided with hotels, travel expenses, stylists etc) would have been too much, and because there are so many of them, the voting power would have been immense.

The idea of the show is to provide £100,000 to launch someone's music career - by the very nature of a children's choir, that wouldn't be possible for us.

The children took the news very well, and were all very philosophical about it. We had all had a good (if long and hot) day out - it was the day when England were playing Germany, and we got to watch the match in the Hackney Empire, with Dizzee joining us for a little while. So it was v enjoyable.

Just a little frustrating that they even encouraged the choir to take part in the first place. We saw some glimpses of them in the audition programmes, but we were expecting them not to be shown, as it wouldn't have been easy to show the judges reaction and then explain why they weren't put through.

So, my feeling is, that although there is less of the freak show element than the X factor (although we had a couple on the day we were there), it is certainly just as manipulative.

brassick, the choir sounds great!

I don't doubt that behind the scenes production and editing and "storylining" goes on this show - it does on most documentaries/reality shows to give characters arcs and end up with a slick narrative that audiences can relate to - even Newsnight reportage sections do this.

Still, the X factor is so much more cheesy and fake. So while I agree that MBTM might not be a handcrafted artisan goat cheese, it is still a superior supermarket mature cheddar to the processed cheese favour slice that is the X Factor.

Well I think they sound great, you can decide for yourself if you go . That video is them competing in a more "classical" type competition, they sang "The Rose" at MBTM, which is also on You Tube...

I do understand that there has to be a narrative to these things, and yes, MBTM is definitely less scripted (and predictable) than the X Factor.

It has no doubt been a useful experience for the children, many of whom want to go into the entertainment business, and need to be aware of how these things work.