Chase reviews - The Australian X-Factor

The hit British TV show 'X-Factor' moves down under, and looks to continue the Cowell plan for world domination.

X-Factor winners 2005 - Random. Only image availabel in googlesearch.

 

The Australian version of the show features the same format of live auditions, judged by a panel containing one girl, two singers, and one huge asshole with a superiority complex. however, there are subtle but major differences in this antipodean version. Whilst the British version featured quite a lot of singing, the Aussie version has decided to jettison 99% of the singing in favour of long lingering pauses by the judges.



The entire bootcamp episode featured next to no singing. A chosen few auditionees were given about 6 seconds each of accapella singing, but the majority of the show consisted of close ups of teary wannabe's being told 'yes' or 'no' by our celebrity judges. Given that we hadn't heard any of these contestants actually sing, this meant that we literally didn't give a shit if these people got through or not.



The only person who we did hear 'sing' was Hippeweasel rocker Aliyan Childs. He made it through the bootcamp despite forgetting the lyrics in his initial audition, his second audition and his final audition. Given that the job description of 'singer' has two parts, and one of them is 'remember the lyrics' this seemed to be a strange choice.

This is about as famous as this guy is ever going to get.

 

As ever, the show isn't about the contestants as much as it is about the judges. Watching Guy Sebastian try and pretend that he gives a shit about beating Ronan Keating is about as convincing as watching a squirrel do an elephant impression. This show is about as competitive as the Amish army, unless the competition is for who can come up with the most banal sounding advice for a prospective superstar.



And then there is Kyle. Kyle seems to be under the impression that he is ascerbic and witty. Despite being fired from every job he's ever had for being a prize douchenozzle, Kyle continues to fire his nausiating put downs to the contestants under the obvious misapprehension that he is 'keeping it real', and 'edgy'. It is obvious that the show is looking to make him the focus of the manufactured controversy that goes with all these programmes - which seems like a good decision given Kyles histry of getting 12 eyar old girls to admit rape via lie detector test live on air - but the cringeworthy truth is that Kyle is just trying too hard to be contraversial.



Maybe when the show gets towards the singing things will pick up, but so far, all we have seen is the judges look tired and about 100 people either cry or celebrate.



3 stars, some funny bits.