Dancing on Ice has come to its death, but what would have improved it and made it stay on our screens longer?

For me, firstly, it has always needed a companion show! Like ITT on Strictly. You need it becuase you get to know the celebs and pros better and you see them in training and there's more continuity as if you're going on the journey with them.

Next, we needed to get to know the pros better! One of the best things about SCD is seeing friendships build up between the teacher and student building a relationship. On DOI the pros are just there.

Also, the pros should have been allowed to choreograph their own routines for their celebs!! Torvill and Deans routines have become very samey. If the pros did their own dances, it would be a mire exciting varied show!

Also, the show misses the intimacy and feel-good-factor Strictly has. On SCD, the judges have banter, get on, and have the occasional tiff. On DOI it just seems the judges are always at each others throats making uncomfortable viewing (Karen and Jason anyone?) Also, SCD has the backstage bit where they talk to the female presenters which makes for a more intimate viewing experience.

One seriously bad thing is that its on Sunday! Talent shows like Dancing on Ice belong on Saturday nights! Some people are too busy on Sunday nights, and their viewing experience is overshadowed by the sadness that it is indeed Monday tomorrow!

Also it is all too sterile! It is too serious, the set is clinical and everything id just a bit dry. They needed a more exciting set, and more funny bits from the presenters and judges.

I could think of more but what dies everyone else think would have prolonged the life of DOI?

I stopped watching the second they hired Louis Spence, I know he's gone now but i just never bothered with it again.

Also the producers started producers started stunt evictions like BB, I remember one year they voted a few people off on week one, I think it was Angela Rippon. So nobody was voting on skating skill - seemed unfair to me.

The companion show adds depth - but only for perhaps 20% of the audience - so it may not add many viewers. probably worth doing though.

The public vote has been a problem - some years more than on stricty. There's an Emmerdale vote, a male bias many years unless the females are much better or disliked, a strong anti-judge vote that keeps the worst in too long some years, and derisory votes for some good, usually female, perfomers, for no good reason.

They haven't got the judging panel, or its criteria right. It doesn't judge what the public might want to see, or provide as good panto as SCD. Nicky went for being too technical and erratic, on top of any other reasons. But no sooner had he gone than Robin became too technical, and Jason became erratic. They experimented with judges who could judge entertainment value and technical ability professionally - with Ruthie and Katerina - but then went for Ashley, who could do neither. They tried going for the popular judge who could express a general view and lead the voters with Emma - but she went - even though she was successful leading the vote when necessary. They end up with Karen saying nothing. Ashley saying nothing. Jason being Craig, but even more erratic and negative, and Robin being a version of Len - but without the character, or looking above anyone's feet. Understandably, at that point the audience ignores the judges last series.


The big problem though is lack of good routines. There's little progression, simple carrying lifts, regurgitated moves, lack of imagination, and less story or spectacle than SCD. They try and liven things up by introducing silly, unfair, potentially destructive, twists - forgetting that the skating itself is meant to provide the drama. Competitors also don't progress through different dancing styles as they do on SCD, or by adding more difficult moves week on week. The problem is many of the pros couldn't choregraph better themselves - even if they were given viable themes and good music. They would have to add choregraphic talent from outside. The problem then might be that only a few celebs could cope. Its also dificult to see how you could find enough time with weekly shows to add skills.

You could also make the show more impressive by having more and better exhibition work by the pros, or top international performers. That would require training time, and money, though, and might lose some viewers who want to see T and D still do something.Its also dubious how many top people you could get with ongoing training and an olympics currently close.

To be honest I think DOI was always going to have a more limited shelf life. You can criticise T&D to an extent but ultimately there is only so much you can get novice skaters to do even the best like Ray.

Keeping Defrosted would have been nice as would having more focus on the pros but I suspect that would only have kept the hardcore fans happier & would make little difference to the overall viewing figures.

The panel though does sometimes forget that it's an entertainment show & can be rather earnest & dreary, best personified by their pathetic reaction to Beth winning last year. Jason really is the Poundland version of Craig Revel Horwood.

Too many joke contestants IMO. But I'd hate to see it off, I enjoyed it.

I agree with your point about pros, that's always been one of the biggest problems of DOI for me. There seems to be no stability with the pros, every year we get a plethora of new pros who we barely know and only a handful of pros who we actually recognise remain, most of the new pros are gone by the next year! In Strictly the pros are an important part of the show and I think it should have been the same for DOI.

It started going downhill after Series 5 for me though, I hated the way they reduced the judging panel from 5 to 3 - a judging panel of 5 was something unique to the show and it just worked so much better than the panel of 3 did imo. Keeping Emma Bunton was a big mistake as well imo, she worked fine on the panel of 5 as it meant she wasn't as important but having her on a panel of 3 was ridiculous considering she had no ice skating knowledge and little dance experience. The large amount of ridiculous twists they added was something I hated as well and started to ruin the show for me. I really hope they reduce the amount of twists this year, I'm looking forward to it for nostalgia sake as I really loved the first 5 series but they could easily ruin it again.

I agree with the points about a sister show - I loved watching Defrosted and getting to know the Pros and seeing the training in more depth.

I also think they could have done more with the Pros - on the tour they do some spectacular routines but maybe they don't do it on the tv show as it would show how poor the actual contestants are in comparison!

I don't think the choreogrpahy is an issue - they are very limited with what they can do with amateurs. I don't watch Strictly but presumably there's more scope on solid ground than ice!

I also think they have too many joke contestants. One per series is enough. Todd Carty being back will be just more of the same - it was funny the first time but the joke wore thin.

For me it was when they ditched the weekly required element that I started to lose interest.

I also found series 4 to be quite a turn-off in general, largely due to the fact that Ray was so much better than anyone else and it was immediately obvious in week 1 that he would win.

It was in Series 7, I think, when they put in all the "twists". Also, Karen Barber's changing roles and status did not help.

I enjoyed the companion show, but would have preferred Ben on his own - he's more than capable and didn't really need Coleen

I don't like them introducing 'twists' just for the sake of it, like the Ice Pick...

I still can't understand whey they pimped Matt so much last year. It was obvious he wasn't popular with the public (looking at the voting results), so would never win...so why not cut their losses and let him go?

I think it's down to

a) not letting the pros have control over choreography/music - then we would get more varied approaches/show
b) the fact that (inevitably) many higher-profile celebs are unlikely to do the show because of the potential for injury - if they've got an important drama series/sporting event or whatever lined up, they're not going to want to put that at risk,

Oh, and having uber-bland judges like Emma Bunton or Ashley whatnot was a big mistake

I was an avid DOI fan from the first series. I can't skate a step but I loved it, such that I went on tour dates, saw other ice shows and made some great friends among other fans (*waves to anybody who knows me*).

But I stopped watching the show after a few episodes of series 6. Was that when they started all those stupid twists? It was certainly the series when there was a ridiculous fauxmance between Brianne Delcourt and Sam Attwater (it didn't stop them winning, but I'd lost interest by then) which totally lowered the tone. I know I sound as if I should be wearing a twinset and pearls, but it stank of desperation to me.

That year, I was lucky enough to go with a friend to the filming of one of the shows and I met Robin Cousins. I asked him why T&D did all the choreography because, much as I love them, it had all grown rather samey and predictable (I was a little more diplomatic than that!). He said that the pro dancers don't necessarily have the skills to do their own choreography - most of them have specialists to do that. But I think it's key to the show's slip down the ratings - why watch a new series when it was just going to be the same as the previous one? Hence the introduction of 'twists' and hence the downward spiral.

Again, I watched the first few episodes of series 7, and the next, but neither grabbed my attention for long enough. Same old same old.

The Great British Public turned off DOI before I did - series 5, which Hayley Tamaddon won, and which I enjoyed (if only for Jai Ho) lost viewers over the course of the series, the first series to do so, but it's been a pattern that's been repeated ever since. Series 3, which Suzanne Shaw won, had over 12 million viewers for its final show, up from 9.34 million for the launch show. By last year, the figures slipped from 7.49 million for the opening show to 7.36 million for the final. No wonder this will be the last series.

Strictly Come Dancing remains my winter reality show of choice, and that's partly because I feel we know more about the professional partners on that show. DOI virtually ignores the pro half of the skating partnership, which feels rude after the more equitable treatment meted out by the Strictly producers. Still, as they appear to have little input, maybe it's fair after all.

I'll watch the show again to help fill the hole that the end of Strictly has created, and I'll cheer for Kyran and Suzanne, but I won't mourn the death of DOI and it's not a given that I'll stick it out to the final. We'll see.

DOI would have lasted longer if they had six celebs max. On Strictly there is a real difference to the dances but with skating you're skating and lifting, so after a while it becomes uninteresting. A shorter, snappier series may have benefited the show.

Plus there is always one or two in DOI head and shoulders above the rest.

Ironically part of the problem is the dancing bit in the title. All the winners post Kyran I think have been dance trained at some point , and mostly actors, or lastly, a gymnast. It would be really expecting too much to expect anyone to learn to dance and skate and act from scratch . A couple of people who did very well arrived with experience on ice and dancing.

Wierldly their response to that seems to have been to never (can't think of one?) cast anyone who had done SCD. There seems to be a bar on both shows taking people from the other.It can't be that no one, ever, has wanted to do both surely? Thats Bizarre because not only has SCD turned some people into good dancers, but both shows have had people who underperformed because they were more suited by physique to the other show. SCD has also kept off most of the celebs who were highly trained dancers at some early stage of their career - who could have been ideal to do DOI.

They would still have to find soem better routines for people to do. but leaving much of the talent pool unexplored was not a great idea.

Did anyone else think that the show was going to recover in the run up to Series 8?

I thought they were gonna change things round a bit - star-studded lineup, lower number of couples (all skating from week one?), brilliant trailer...

But no, they insisted on not having a full show until Week 4, knocked out Pamela in Week 1, and they had a terribly biased panel.

* DOI relied too much on Torvil and Dean. T&D are very talented, but they're not able to give everyone a good enough routine that's well suited to their abilities. I understand the point that the pro skaters may lack choreography skills, but they aren't the only alternative to relying so much on T&D.

* DOI relied too much on lifts. I suspect that, over the years, viewers became less and less impressed by lifts. The headbanger, for example, ceased to seem to a difficult and exciting feat and became instead an expected and almost anticlimactic part of the show. And since even a Coleen Nolan could be lifted, being lifted didn't seem to take much skill from the female celebs, yet practicing lifts could take so much time that the development of their skating suffered.

* Too many poor to hopeless skaters. Clearly quite a few people find skating difficult, but the celebs start training months before the show begins. We shouldn't end up with people who can just barely move themself across the ice.

As with SCD, there are many who emphasise that "it's an entertainment show". But if skating isn't important in DOI, why should this particular entertainment show exist? The more DOI relies for entertainment on controversial and caustic comments from the judges, on comic failures, on flying, on dance moves brought onto the ice in ways that don't involve skating, and so on, the less reason it has to exist at all.

* The judging panel, especially Jason (except for Robin). I think the producers were right to get rid of Jason and wrong to bring him back. He's too unpleasant and makes too much of relatively unimportant things. I thought that adding Katarina Witt showed the right kind of thinking, even though she was a bit bland. Bitchy and bland should not be the only alternatives. There must be people out there who could be interesting and entertaining without being nasty and obsessed with minor things; but for some reason DOI failed to find them.

* Flying again, year after year; Boleros again, year after year. Just when the show ought to be building up to the best routines of a series, we get things we've seen too much of too many times before.

* Ray and Hayley. It was too clear that they were going to win, and they both relied a lot on ways of bringing non-skating dance moves onto the ice. (At least Ray was a strong skater as well.)

And get rid of joke dancers.

I think the main thing that has gone wrong with DOI is that it has been allowed to become stale.

I hate to say it, but I think one of the problems is that it is basically the Torvill & Dean show. They present the show, skate in it, choreograph the routines for all the skaters..... However marvellous they may be (and I'm not disputing the fact they are marvellous) everyone has limits, and the whole thing became very "samey" after the first 3 series. The same routines put to different music doesn't make them new, exciting routine, whether its routines for the celebs or the ones T&D skate.

They needed to either employ pros who (like Strictly pros) are capable of choreographing routines for their celeb partners, or alternatively employed a whole group of different choreographers.

If they must have things like a props week, the couples should be allowed to choose their own props. Get rid of the daft flying routines...... anything, in fact freshen the show up.

T&D should stick to presenting - no need then for Philip & Christine - and maybe just skate 1 routine in the final to keep their fans happy.

Yeah I agree with this statement. I used to love DOI when it started but now it does feel a bit stale. It's like the head banger...........totally amazing when someone does it but after seeing it about 10/15 times already, it doesn't make you gasp in disbelief as it did when you saw it for the first couple of times, cause like you said, its the same old stuff that's been done a ton of times already

I agree with some of the previous comments about having a sister show like scd take 2. It's great to get to know the pros and celebs better. Although this final show we do know the celebs. Not sure who the pros are but sure others on here do and who is partnering who. Also I prefer Saturday for shows like these.

A fair comment really - as has been said though, there's only so much you can do with skaters who are after all amateurs. Hopefully this series might be a bit more interesting as many of the stars taking part already have a decent level of skill, so could be challenged more... time will tell.

However, I do think that stupid twists and attempting to draw attention from the actual skating has been the worst thing to happen to DOI. For a start, in the new series FOUR contestants will be eliminated after skating just once! I much prefer the Strictly policy of letting everyone perform twice at least, and not having double eliminations. What's the hurry?

I agree with all the common threads here and feel rather sad that I don't look forward to the show like I used to. I used to record the first series of Defrosted with Andy Peters and Andrea Mclean and watch it when I got home from work but didn't bother when they brought it back with Coleen etc! I bought tickets to see the tour either the first or second year and it was amazing with fantastic routines performed by the pros and T&D, but don't fancy going again now. Maybe it's just come to it's natural end like many things have a life span and just need to be let go. I will watch the final series and probably enjoy it, looking forward to seeing Hayley, Kyran and Suzanne.

Its not too many lifts, I think, its the same carrying lift(s) where a female is carried accross the rink for no good purpose when they might have looked better skating it, or dancing , or doing something. It just looks too passive - even if it takes some ability. The problem is that many of the females are as weak as the males who just move around slowly pointlessly, and they can't do more. The alternative to a dull lift is nothing. There's a big problem hiding there in that females over a certain height just can't do big lifts anyway - so as soon as you take anyone taller they are limited to simple lifts - just as weak, short, males, and heavier females also come with a disadvantage. Its no coincidence that all the female all stars are under 5-4.

The problem they added was that, even when people could do more, more exciting, lifts, they failed to build on what some people like Jorgie could do, and at best repeated moves, or at worst tried for impossible ones. Even when given someone unique, like Beth, they couldn't think of more than a couple of moves that actually used her skills, and reused one time and time again. Hayley was lucky she was up against weak opposition and got some good dance routines, and at least one great routine that allowed her to dance, and use her ability to spin. Suzanne and Clare were probably best provided for - with routines that allowed them to do a variety of moves, dance, and progress building moves into more difficult and exciting ones over the weeks. Lack of imagination, and possibly safety concerns, moved in after series 3.

Without the lifts, skating to be at all entertaining needs tricks - like jumps, and spins - or dancing and a story to act. They don't have female celebs who can do tricks like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M90Shw4C4U, though, or tricks as a pair like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrHD9EYRdEE. And if you just want a good ice dance routine, you have to have people who can skate fast, dance well, synchronise well, and have the right choregraphy - and you still have big lifts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiHKNVQWis4. There's been probably less than half a dozen of each sex in the entire history of the show who can spin or jump well enough to look good, and the best DOI performers have all been dance trained with good routines. Its a real achievement that some of the female celbs like Suzanne, Beth, Jorgie, Bonnie and clare have actually been able to do many of the same moves and lifts seen at the Olympics at all.

This series there will have to be big lifts from the female celebs - not only because they can all do them, and will be competring with each other - but also because the top males are all strong enough to put up a big lift, and their female pros will be using that to do some big lifts themselves.


I would add the showdance to your last but one para. It tended to lose the finalist in a group, and showed no real ability or connection with the partner. And, as the choregraphy varied widely in quality, it potentially derailed the best contestant before they even stepped out on finals night. The aerial work might be unfair on some males, but it looked better when done well than any of the hashed up showdances.

I take the point that the alternative to a dull lift can be nothing that's at all interesting, and that the male celebs lift the female pros. But I still think DOI puts too much emphasis on lifts.

Perhaps the problem is that skating is too hard and lifts too easy.

Some lifts are difficult and represent significant accomplishments, but I don't think DOI has ever done a good job of making that clear or of explaining the skills and abilities involved. Meanwhile, viewers can see that almost all the celebs, both male and female, seem to finding skating difficult and struggle to do even something like a simple spin (in some cases even to skate on their own), but all the women can be lifted. Lifts therefore seem an easy option. It's clear that some lifts are dangerous and that some require strength, but I don't think it seems to viewers like they need as much skill as skating.

This works against female contestants in two ways. First, they're the ones being lifted, which seems easier than skating; second, they have to spend a lot of time practising the lifts, and that is time not spent improving their skating. Meanwhile, the men can work on their skating even while they're practising lifting.

The emphasis on lifts is to make the show more "spectacular", not to give all the female celebs the routines that would be best for them. Meanwhile, the lifts have less and less spectacular effect on viewers, because they've seen it all before. And when a different sort of lift comes along, such as Jessica's candle lift in "Mercy" in the 2009 series, it tends to be undervalued because it's not one of the "spectacular" ones the show has been treating as the most worthy.

...

In Virtue and Moir's routines, such as the beautiful dance you linked, only a small proportion of the routine is devoted to lifts. I wonder what DOI would have been like, and if it would have worked better, if it had been aimed more at ice dancing and less at pair skating and Adagio.

It seems odd to call a show "Dancing on Ice" and build it around famous ice dancers Torvill and Dean, and then focus so much on lifts; and I think that most, at least, of the best and most memorable routines from female DOI contestants relied on good skating (good by DOI standards) and weren't focused too much on lifts. I don't think Suzanne Shaw would have won if it hadn't been for one of the judges saying she was doing too many lifts and not enough skating.

Re "Suzanne and Clare were probably best provided for - with routines that allowed them to do a variety of moves, dance, and progress building moves into more difficult and exciting ones over the weeks", I would say that Suzanne was in trouble because of too many lifts before one of the judges pointed that out, and that I think Jessica Taylor had some of the best variety in her routines. I think she's under-appreciated, underrated; and I'm disappointed that she's not among the "all stars".