Review – The X Factor Australia

The X Factor Australia – Seven – 7:30pm Sunday & Monday – AUS

There’s a lot about Channel 7’s The X Factor that feels familiar. It’s not just that Channel 10 tried and failed with The X Factor five years ago, or that this is now hosted by Luke Jacobz the same chump who fronted the massive flop that was Popstars Live, no, it’s mainly the fact that Australia’s Got Talent only wrapped up its season two months ago and you’d be forgiven for mistaking these two Channel 7 entertainment behemoths for being the exact same program.

As with Australia’s Got Talent there’s Kyle Sandilands sitting on the end being snarky, there’s a little mousy brunette next to him, this time in the form of Natalie Imbruglia, and you’ve even got an Irish pop star who used to be in a boy band with Ronan Keating replacing the intolerable Brian McFadden. X Factor is on the same network as Talent, it’s made by the same people as Talent, it’s got a set that looks plucked straight out of Talent, the auditions are happening in front of a live audience just like on Talent, you’ve got old people embarrassing themselves like on Talent and the judging panel even has a big X on the front of it like Talent does. The only real difference seems to be a lack of jugglers and the addition of Guy Sebastian.

The X Factor kicked off Monday night with the first of a week’s worth of audition episodes. It would be nice if we as a nation of television viewers could write a joint letter to reality shows in an effort to finally rid the world of ‘the audition round’:

Dear Reality Shows, we understand that you have auditions. We realize there will be heart warming tales and embarrassing shockers, we accept that, we know how it works, and we’ve been watching them for the last decade. We know that when you stop to hear a person’s sob story that they’ll undoubtedly turn out to be really talented, just as we know that when you linger a little long with somebody who seems a little too full of themselves that you’ll soon cut them down to size with their lousy audition. We’ve been here before. Can we all agree that there were shocking moments and touching moments and just move on? Please.

Of course, that’s not going to happen this year as The X Factor trotted out all the old tricks. There were the awkward singers who were met with plenty of carefully selected reaction shots of audience members gaping in confusion. There were funny looking people with possible mental issues who were predictably terrible. They even trotted out the old Idol trick of choosing an artist, this time Lady GaGa, and pointing out how she was being butchered by so many contestants. Then they show three or four singers doing a bad rendition of Lady GaGa before Luke Jacobz narrates something like “will such-and-such be able to break the trend!” and surprise surprise such-and-such does!

The X Factor is over-produced to within an inch of its life. The producers can’t let any moment sit still without pounding a poorly chosen pop-song to blare over the soundtrack to remind us how we should be feeling. Oh look, there’s some cute boys on stage, let’s play Justin Bieber. Oh look, that girl’s had a tough life, let’s play Miley Cyrus – The Climb. Oh this guy just sang Queen, let’s play We Are The Champions. The X Factor producers just can’t help themselves; it’s as if they’re afraid of silence or organic moments.

There was a moment during the first episode where a young gentleman confessed that he’d moved to Australia because he was afraid his dad would disown him if he was gay. It’s the sort of story that would be genuinely touching if the X Factor producers weren’t such shameless pricks and had let his story play out, but they just had to pound hard on the weepy soundtrack and amp the violins up to eleven just to remind everybody at home they should be crying. A real moment destroyed by a show terrified that they’re audience has ADD and is unaware of how emotions work.

There’s a lot to hate about The X Factor, and more than what I’ve listed above. It’s overblown, it features more hyperbole than a thousand million ego-maniacal volcano gods, it has far too many ads, it never finds a real use for Guy Sebastian other than forgetting about him on the end, it’s over-edited and it’s ridiculously self-indulgent.

That’s not to say that The X Factor isn’t half way enjoyable, in the way that American Idol can get when an Adam Lambert type appears on stage or Simon Cowell gets off a particularly cutting remark. Kyle is nowhere near as clever as Cowell, but he’s nowhere near as repulsive as we as a nation of gut-reactions have made him out to be. Imbruglia and Keating are both passable as the ‘nice’ hosts and don’t deserve anywhere near the number of punches to the face that McFadden or Minogue would warrant. Guy Sebastian is Guy Sebastian, he’s a walking throw pillow; inoffensive and out of the way.

There’s the faintest tiniest spark that The X Factor could be big dumb fun, but at the moment the problem is that The X Factor is a massive poser of a show. It’s not cool but it pretends to be, it’s not epic but it makes noise as if it is. At one point during the show Guy Sebastian tells a contestant that you’ve got to ‘fake it til you make it’, and that seems to be what The X Factor is doing at this point. The X Factor is NOT a massive Australian television phenomenon, but it hopes that if it yells loud enough and uses font big enough that people will be tricked into believing it is a phenomenon. The X Factor isn’t as atrocious as Australia’s Got Talent and it isn’t as boring as Australian Idol, that’s not to say it’s altogether ‘good’ by any means that’s just to say that as big dumb television goes this gets a reluctant pass from me.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright