I kind of loved it, sorry everyone.

Fun song, cute idea and it was great seeing Jay in tails doing lindyhop. Even though it was very brief, I thought Anita and Georgia looked like they were doing a fab job as well.

My only two complaints were the ending with the pieing, as it felt a bit lazy, and the camera work was all over the place, but when is it not?

No need to apologise We can all have an opinion and despite not liking what they dished up on the night I think there 'was' a good dance in there, they just used to many dancers. Obviously they had the extra dancers for the contestants dances and figured another four couples out on the floor wouldn't hurt, but I feel it did. If they had kept it to the usually pros and the contestants up on that table it may have felt a lot more controlled and smooth. A missed opportunity maybe.

Yes, I hadn't thought of that but that's a very true point.

Like a Panto wasn't it? What's all this story business about? And each year we seem to get more and more props slipping in

I thought it was the worst pro dance ever. A complete and utter mess. I really wish they'd ditch the choreographer and go back to choreographing their own group routines. They were so much better. This years have been awful. Why do they have to have a theme or tell a story? It's ridiculous. Last nights was dreadful. Too many dancers. Too frenetic. No wow factor at all. Were we meant to be impressed? I certainly wasn't. The best pro dances are those that are tight and compact, not spread all over the floor like this with people doing random stuff and just mucking about.

It was awful but it was always going to be, from the way Gilkison described it on ITT. I wish they'd get rid of him.

Also, and I don't understand this - I was watching via the Internet on a slight delay and most of the programme was clear but the group dance was really fuzzy and I think it has been on previous weeks too. I didn't have a clue who most of the dancers were.

I quite liked it. No it wasn't a good ballroom dance but we don't get much of that anymore so I enjoyed it for what it was. It was nice to see Giovanni shine and Karen be the angry chef. It was better than the travesty where they had Sophie Ellis Bexter and Abbey Canvey come out as huge flowers a couple of blackpools ago.

That's usually the case with most shows on I player it takes a couple of minute for the quality to settle on a good quality when you load it up. Meaning the beginning (where the group dances usually are) can be fuzzy.

WHAT!!?!?!? Yes the big flowers were a bit weird, but I thought that was one of the best Blackpool openings ever. The theme of 'dancing is for everyone' with the kids and the old couples I thought gut was so feel good and demonstrated everything that is good about strictly. How can you not have enjoyed it?
http://youtu.be/_EvNJmkhpTI

It's actually to do with the way digital compression works. Digital compression works by not streaming data for bits of the screen which look the same. Therefore if you have block colours it takes less data to send the picture.

Strictly really pushes the codecs to their max. The action is fast moving, the coloured lighting means almost every pixel on the screen is a slightly different colour, and then adding small elements like confetti or glitter means that the codecs cannot find enough similarities on the screen to compress the image. Therefore it makes errors and tries to make matches where they don't exist resulting in the muddy or blurry pictures you talk about.

The bit rate would need to be upped massively to compensate for this. Sometimes when they have lots of glitter it is even blurry when watching live on BBC1 (SD, HD is normally ok)

I thought all of them were absolute hot messes. I love a bit of lindy hop so that was the only part of the first routine I liked, but they all felt cramped, unrehearsed and like a lot of the dancers hadn't gotten the routine down fully before they have to perform it.

I'm really over Jason Gilkison's routines tbh. I'm sick of this director of choreography business and him trying to make Strictly into a So You Think You Can Dance mash up with Burn the Floor.

Last night's opening dance I didn't mind, ok it was a bit messy and we didn't see enough of the celebs but the stand out for me was Jay in his tails...when we saw him, which was not much!!

I actually think tonight's opening dance was worse and why they bothered having the celebs take part I don't know just for them to appear for a few seconds at the end.

For both dances there were too many people on the dance floor.

The best dance imo at Blackpool was the beautiful ballroom dance that they did the year????? Well the year Natalie Lowe, Katya Virshilas and Aliona joined. I think it was a V.Waltz and it was just lovely.

I hate the Lindy, but would have liked the routine if it was good. The music is my bag, so no prob there, but not this opening number in terms f the way it was structure. Ironically I thought it became good when the celebs came in, and usually group numbers with pros and celebs are only good when the pros are dancing, imo, but the structure for the first part was annoying.

The 1930s.

(although I assume the inspiration came from this 1941 film scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkthxBsIeGQ)

As a dedicated Lindy Hopper I was super happy to see some of my favourite dance on TV, but I also thought there were just too many people in it, and the pros looked a bit pants (understandable, I bet the Lindy Hoppers would look a bit pants if someone asked them to Samba on TV with only a couple of rehearsals).

They love their run on, run off waves of dancers at the mo, they could have done some of that, that way they could still have everyone in it, but keep the floor less cluttered.

Would love to know what it looked like live, and if the camera work needs some blame (after all, it usually does).

But yes, as Beebumble points out, considering the giant flower costumes, it wasn't THAT bad.

I didn't catch this dance properly at the time, I see what you mean about Jo and Janette's high kicks now, wow Janette!

Both opening dances this weekend were too frantic for me, the direction didn't seem to capture it all and didn't feel like we could see what was happening.

Thanks for this! I've wondered about it for a while!

I haven't had a TV for about 6 years now (since they switched off the analogue signal in my area) and although I can still legally watch iplayer as long as it isn't during the live broadcast, I find it largely pointless due to the blurry movement.

I'm getting pretty good at wangling invites to friends' houses on Saturday nights (but only from September to December, and only friends with HD TV)!

When necessary I watch it sitting very close to the computer screen without going into full screen - any idea why YouTube is usually more watchable than iPlayer?