If you’re reading this outside the UK, Strictly is the parent of Dancing with the Stars and its various international equivalents, in which celebrities are taught to dance by Latin and ballroom professionals.
Strictly is broken and I’m sad about it. Will it recover? Maybe, sort of, but the idea that it is wholesome and joyful entertainment is over and done (poor old Bake Off, no pressure).
There are two things I don’t understand about the current mess. One: did people - the BBC, producers, contestants, agents - genuinely not know that professional dancers have undergone brutal training since childhood? They’ve been turned into machines that dance. They have had their spirits crushed, as well as their feet, for years and years on end. They’ve often come from parts of the world where it remains acceptable to tell dance students that they’re useless pieces of crap on an hourly basis, and to give them a little whack to emphasise the point. They have been abused and traumatised and shouted at, told they’re fat, etc etc. This is as true of ‘fun’ professional ballroom/Latin dancing as it is of ballet. And it’s deemed worth enduring, because at the end - maybe - you lift trophies and become famous.