I have total respect for Craig RH. At least he scores properly. Len et al don't seem to think there's a score below 5. What's the point in having a range from 1-10 if you only use half the numbers?
There's nothing wrong with getting a 2 - it means you have more work to do. If you get a 5 or 6 and you're not that good then you think 'well at least it wasn't a 2' and then unsurprisingly not understand when you try/work harder and just get a 6 again. I admire Craig for scoring properly. I can easily differentiate between a 2, a 5 , and a 9 from him. But from the others -- a 5 or 6 to most is not discerning enough.
There I feel better for that!

Yeh I agree, I do also think though that he under-scores quite often. I think Bruno's under-rated as a judge and people are distracted by his craziness ... I actually listen to him more than the others..

Didn't Craig give someone a 1 once ? I think it may have been Fiona Phillips... I'm not saying that's under-scoring at all but it is a bit OTT !

Over all Bruno and Craig are the best judges imo, although they all bring something to the table.

I agree. I hate charity marks. Some dances are a 3 ,2 or even a 1. What also annoys me also is the judges sre reluctant to give 9's or 10's so early on, even when they are deserved. Then later in the series sometimes too many 10's are given out. Last night I think Ricky deserved more 9's. His rhumba was fantastic.

i also get so irritated when len looks at craig for the scores he gives but he is being REAListic

is their relationship an act?

There is a bit of mis-interpretation of the purpose of the scoring by the judges.
The original idea was to rank the dancers in order so that you could show which was the best or worst in your opinion. With 8 dancers, you would expect a spread of up to 8. With 14 next week, you could expect a spread of up to 10.
Instead, its a case of how many sweets does each child deserve on the show. This works in terms of not offending the celebs who cant dance, and it gives the good ones something to jump around about when they get a high score. Its showbiz after all.
I think Craig is taking his generous pills this year, at least with the scoring.

He did give a 1 once and I don't know who it was to, but in the bit when they showed the judges chatting (it isn't on this year), he was asked about it by another judge and he said something to the effect of it being 1 for turning up and he would have given a zero if he could!

Gary Rhodes last year for his Cha Cha (or was it the jive???) and Fiona also. Quentin may have also got one.

Quentin got a 1 from both Craig and Arlene. Didn't John also get a '1' from Craig?

Craig has given a 1 four times...

Quentin Wilson (Cha Cha)
Fiona Phillips (Rumba)
Gary Rhodes (Cha Cha)
John Sergeant (Cha Cha)

Arlene also gave Quentin Wilson a 1 for the same dance.

I agree with the OP.
If someone nicked Len's 1-4 paddles, he wouldn't ever notice.

Ricky was good the first week, but a 9? Seriously?
Where can he go from there?

Maybe Len will dig out his 1 paddle and by the end of the series will be giving out 12, 13, 14,15....

If they had paddles from 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 etc. to 10.0, that might solve the problem.

I agree. Not enough differentiation between the scoring from most of the judges.

I wish the other judges would follow Craig's example and get some of the lower paddles out.

Ricky deserved that 9. Just because it is week one, doesn't mean he is not up to the standard of a 9.

That made me chuckle.

I do wish there wasn't such a tendency for the scores to cluster around the 6 mark so much...

Wow, I didn't realise he'd given a 1 to that many contestants !! A 1 really is a slap in the face though...I can fully understand giving 2s but 1s...I guess it's good though that, like the OP said, Craig isn't afraid to use any of the cards.

I don't think he was that good. As Len said, the movements were too hard and the rumba is all about romance. There was also no chemistry between Ricky and Natalie.

I think the problem lies in the fact that Arlene, like Craig, was quite strict with her scores at the start. It helped differentiate the couples a bit more.

Now we have three judges all marking quite generously and similarly.

Yes, they don't leave themselves enough room to differentiate among the better dancers; and they can end up with nowhere to go but 10 for something that doesn't seem to deserve it.

Unfortunately, much of the audience, and even some of the contestants, seem to regard anything below 6 (or maybe it's 7) as almost an insult, rather than a valid mark.

But when they used the 2-4 marks they ended up with 40% of the votes going to whoever got them. 5 now means thanks for turning up. 6 means Ok. 7 means good or very good but we can't use too many 8s so far and we don't want you to be seen as teachers pet so here is a 7 that means more.
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Whats happened is because the BBC had to cut costs. They made Len sit next to Craig and share the paddles. Len has 6-10 whilst Craig has 1-5.

I do think that Craig was overly harsh with Jo wood this week though , I know she is not the best dancer , but his scores and remarks to her were very insulting and I honestly felt that she was better than Richard Dunwoody who was marked better than her

A lot of the time he does talk a lot of sense and fulfill the simon Cowell role but on this I think there was a bit of a personal vendetta from him

Perhaps Len has his 1-5 padles at home in his bedside chest ready to use I think somebody should Ask Len what he did with them and what he uses them for

It was full of chemisrty to me. I think Len said that about the movements being too hard, because no one else had criticised him so he had to, to be fair. He does need constructive criticism however, to get better of course.

Len has used the argument before - and so have I - that scores are a reflection of the level reached in the competition.

That's to say, if somebody churned out dances of the current standard in six weeks' time, the marks would be far lower, because they should have learned and developed more. However, at a basic level, they deserve high marks for the criteria Len is judging on at the time.

I would agree that generally Len marks a little too high, but I have no problem with him using 9s at this stage, as long as Ricky keeps improving and deserving his 9s later on.