Dancing With The Stars Ireland is beloved. But are we prepared to pay for more TV like this?
MY HITHERTO RELATIONSHIP to Dancing With The Stars had been one of a mild passing interest. Having floor-side seats to the dress rehearsal ahead of last weekend’s Fright Night round, it’s fair to say that interest was upgraded to downright engrossment.
There is simply no way that anyone can witness Olympic gold medallist Rhys Clenaghan front-flip and land with his knees either side of his dance partner’s torso while O Fortuna reaches its eerie crescendo and not think: ‘Now that’s entertainment’.
Backstage at Font Hill Studios, where Dancing With The Stars Ireland has been filmed and produced by Shinawil Productions and RTÉ since the pandemic, one is struck by the sheer scale of the operation. At the risk of sounding like a total hick, the sheer amount of machinery needed to run this behemoth is staggering. The dance-floor is surrounded by 15-foot walls of high-definition LED screens. There are more wires than I have ever seen in my life, all of them presumably essential.
The premises used to be a printworks, which lends itself well to its new purpose of ballroom dancing, as the floors are reinforced with several feet of concrete, allowing for a smooth dancefloor. The set, which looks so permanent on TV, looks remarkably temporary up close — the work of dozens of skilled labourers, done in the month’s leading up to this, the show’s eighth season.
As McClenaghan and Laura Nolan dance, a camera man sprints around them in concentric circles, while an assistant sprints around him, like planets all in orbit. It had never occurred to me before that there was so much running involved. Watching the interplay of the many moving parts, it’s hard to believe that this never goes wrong.
Sometimes it does, as it turns out. Shinawil CEO Larry Bass, who chaperones me through the studio, recalls a time some years ago when the feed cut out and the show went off-air. Nowadays, the show is powered by generators parked behind the studio in case any grid problems should arrive. Also out back are trucks full of people putting together ‘VTs’ (pre-filmed segments), working on colour-grading and a whole host of other very technical jobs that I do not understand. I am focused on not accidentally hitting off any buttons.
Again, at the risk of sounding like a goddamn rube, these many bunkers are reminiscent of something out of NASA. All screens and monitors and people speaking into headsets. Bass shows me the phone where the call comes in from RTÉ to tell producers which two dancers will face the dreaded dance-off and the prospect of elimination.
Asked if there’s a perfect length of time to wait before revealing the names, Bass tells me “it’s all about building a bit of tension” but declines to put a number on it.
The latest season of the show has been its most popular, so much so that it was even debated on Liveline due to celebrity chef’s Kevin Dundon’s continued survival thanks to his popularity with the general public. People called for the judging system to be changed as a result, lending less weight to the public vote.
“What we ask of the dancers is that they’re prepared to put in 12 hours a week of practice, but as it goes on they all get so into it that it becomes closer to 12 hours a day,” Bass says.
“This is a show that is made to be watched with other people, you don’t want to watch it alone. It’s made to be discussed. It gives people an opportunity for people to come together for a few hours on a Sunday evening,” says Bass.
The obsession with the show is evident from the journalists who harangue Bass at the start of every season, throwing every name under the sun at him in an attempt to guess which starts will be on that year’s show.
In a world where so much of the “entertainment” we consume is individuated by algorithms, Bass makes a compelling argument. Dancing With The Stars is the result of between 150-180 people working in tandem, from propmasters making items by hand to make-up artists on their feet for hours, from setmakers to dancers, and everyone in between.
In the sense that public service TV should serve the purpose of being pro-social, giving people something to talk about, giving people something to do with their time, all while delivering on the entertainment front, Dancing With The Stars Ireland has succeeded in ticking all the boxes. All Larry Bass wants… is more. He has said that currently the money isn’t there to do Dancing With The Stars as well as, say, The Voice, which also used to be produced by Shinawil.
RTÉ has been racked by financial scandal in reason years, which Bass admits has forced constraints onto the show. To him, one solution stands out — an increase in the TV licence fee. As he points out: “Nothing we pay for is the same price as it was 17 years ago, but that’s how long it’s been since the last time the TV licence fee went up.”
Sunday night marks the final of the show’s eighth season. Hundreds of thousands of people will tune in for hours of entertainment, followed by the catharsis that comes from hours of discussion afterwards. Dancing With The Stars Ireland is going from strength to strength. Are we prepared to pay for more?
