Strictly Come Dancing 2020 has renewed the nation’s love of live TV

Many fans questioned whether Strictly would even be able to go ahead in the pandemic, but this series has been more impressive than ever and a welcome reminder of the importance of event television, Isobel Lewis writes

Audiences have come together to celebrate this year’s series of Strictly (BBC)

We’ve long been told that live TV is on its way out. Most of the biggest shows of the year – Tiger King, Normal People, The Queen’s Gambit – were consumed online in one sleepless sitting. But they failed to capture that magic of tuning into something knowing that your friend is doing the same thing, at the same time, in their own home. When we look back at the TV shows that defined the coronavirus pandemic, Strictly Come Dancing 2020 should be remembered for showing the importance of live-event TV and its ability to bring viewers together.

Strictly is the conversation prompt we’ve desperately needed as the evenings have grown darker – whether it’s your mum texting you to say that she’s really warmed to Jamie Laing even though he’s not technically the best dancer, inventing a drinking game to play along with your housemates, or the live viewing party that is Twitter every Saturday night.

It’s not only Strictly that has ridden the wave of our renewed interest in live TV. The season premiere of I’m a Celebrity was watched by 14.3 million viewers, an 18-year high viewer high, while the final of The Great British Bake Off was Channel 4’s most watched TV show since their records began in 2002. The BBC has even said it may reinstate BBC Three as a channel following the success of shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and Fleabag, which had new episodes dropping weekly at the same time on iPlayer. When the hours seem endless and weekdays blur into weekends blur into weekdays again, we’ve craved the structure that a scheduled communal viewing experience provides.

But Strictly is different from these programmes, if only for sheer scale. When it was announced in June that the show would go ahead in 2020, it felt incredibly (read: naively) ambitious. But at a time when show after show had been delayed, cancelled or forced to film over Zoom, there was also a sense that if the BBC could pull off something as lavish as Strictly in a pandemic, maybe the TV industry would be OK after all.

It seemed improbable even during the launch show, when Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman repeated over and over again that everything in the show was entirely Covid-compliant in an attempt to stop complaints in their tracks. To its immense credit though, in awkwardly laying the groundwork here, Strictly has managed to go ahead almost without hitch – bar Nicola Adams’s unfortunate exit from the show – and retain a real sense of normality.

At a time when you can’t hug your friends, watching the couples dance together has almost felt normal (BBC/Guy Levy)

There are, of course, differences in this series compared to the previous 17. We have three judges instead of four, the couples can’t interact with anyone else and Daly and Winkleman stand three metres apart, swaying solitarily as they sign off with the words of “keeeeeep dancing”. But in the grand scheme of things, these felt like minor sacrifices when compared to the sheer feat of staging a show like Strictly and having it feel, dare I say, just like any other year.

This is what we wanted from Strictly 2020. The show is so high-camp, so pantomime-esque at a time when pantos are unable to open, that it’s jolted the nation awake. The annual discussions about the “Strictly Curse” and which contestants have previous dance experience have returned as if we’re not living through the biggest world event most of us have ever faced; it’s trivial, of course, but who doesn’t want triviality in a global pandemic? The hard work that has gone into putting on an already huge show like Strictly with added restrictions is unimaginable and a huge testament to the team behind it. They knew that we needed Strictly more than ever and my god, did they deliver.