Strictly Come Dancing Week 3 - Movie Week (spoiler alert)

In a rare move, I have actually stepped away from the DVD player this weekend and into the world of live television as Strictly Come Dancing is back on our screens.  Well technically it’s week 3, not including the prelims when partners are allocated.  Truth be told I missed the first week but as there are no eliminations I wasn’t too bothered.  Last week I missed although I have caught up with all the controversy regarding not having a dance off.  My personal opinion is that Anastacia should have gracefully bowed out if she was unable to perform OR have no elimination and a double elimination this week.  However, that was just my opinion and there was no changing the result and poor Marvin Odoom was the first casualty of 2016.

So onto week three and there was no way I was missing this week as it’s Movie Week.  I love movie week on Strictly as the costumes and dances are always much more interesting.  I was not disappointed and there were some amazing dances and some really funny moments.

Ed Balls is such a good sport.  He’s certainly not the best dancer but for a politician he has a wicked sense of humour and doesn’t mind making a show of himself.  He’s going to be leaving in the next couple of weeks, as I said he’s not a good dancer and as it is a dance contest he will have to make way for the better dancers and the viewers vote won’t save him for long.  I don’t think we’re going to forget his green face very quickly though.  Somebody stop me!

After last week I must confess I was hoping Anastacia would have a bad week but I have to say I was really impressed with her Viennese Waltz.  It was beautiful and elegant, I’m not a dancer so I can never know how accurate the technical side is but I enjoyed watching her.  She genuinely deserved to make it through to the next week.

Some other notable performances came from Louise Redknapp, Ore Oduba, Greg Rutherford and Danny Mac.   However my favourite this week was Claudia Fragapane and her partner AJ Pritchard who danced the Charleston to ‘You Give a Little Love’.  It was fresh, exciting and such a pleasure to watch.  The great big smile on Claudia’s face showed just how much of a good time she was having and her performance was brilliant which showed in her score from the judges.

So by the end of Saturday night, the leader board looked like this

Danny Mac & Oti Mabuse 36

Claudia Fragapane & AJ Pritchard 36

Ore Oduba & Joanne Clifton 35

Greg Rutherford & Natalie Lowe 32

Daisy Lowe & Aljaz Skorjanec 31

Will Young & Karen Clifton 31

Louise Redknapp & Kevin Clifton 31

Laura Whitmore & Giovanni Pernice 30

Tameka Empson & Gorka Marquez 28

Anastacia & Brendan Cole 27

Lesley Joseph & Anton Du Beke 27

Judge Rinder & Oksana Platero 27

Naga Munchetty & Pasha Kovalev 25

Ed Balls & Katya Jones 24

So onto Sunday night and the results of the viewers votes.  A quick recap of the highlights from the previous nights and a lovely performance from Joanne Clifton and Anton Du Beke dancing to Somewhere from West Side Story performed by Michael Ball and Alfie Boe, we come to the moment of truth.  The bottom two couples will enter the dance off and the results were a little bit startling.   The bottom two couples were Laura and Giovanni along with Tameka and Gorka.  Now neither couples dance was exceptionally poor and they were both mid table after the judges scores.  But there they were in the dance off.

Both couples gave a strong performance and all four judges agreed it was hard to decide who to save but in the end three of the judges decided to keep Laura in with only Darcey Bussell voting to save Tameka.

So we said farewell to the lively and bubbly Tameka whilst Laura lives to dance again next week.  With the surprising dance off this week, who knows what will happen as we start to whittle down the remaining 13 contestants.