Dancing with the Stars

I didn't get a chance to watch this show, but now, after it's over, I'm hearing a little bit of buzz about it. I was looking into it, and I've realized that I've basically been watching the identical show off and on throughout the year in Neuch. Just the Italian version that I can't seem to remember the name of. I noticed that Dancing with the Stars was based on a BBC show, so I guess I wasn't watching the original one either, but it's just so strange that different countries seem to have the same shows. Yes, I know every country around the world has (or had) "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", "Survivor" and "Big Brother", but when I was watching this one, somehow I didn't think that it would fly in North America...although movie stars in North America are the equivalent of royalty in Europe, so I guess there would be a demand to see celebrities doing yet another TV show (even if they aren't A-list ones). Still it was a little weird to hear about this show being a success. I enjoyed watching the Italian one (even though I had no idea what they were saying) because the stars and their partners looked like they were having such a great time dancing, and isn't that what dancing's all about?

There's another show that I would watch off and on in Neuch. It was another Italian dance show called Amici about dancing. It might be similar-ish to the potential next dancing show phenom: So You Think You Can Dance. Because of the language barrier I couldn't completely figure out what was going on, but the dancers seemed to only have to dance classical, jazz and hip hop or something, all the participants sat on some kind of panel in the audience and would discuss each other's performances or bash each other (there was an episode with lots of crying - it was like there was some weird romance going on as well?!?), and after they were down to a smaller group of competitors it looked like they lived together in some weird set up in/nearby the television studios. For some reason I think there was singing too. It might have been more of a triple threat kind of show. The host lady had a crazy deep raspy voice and although the show was dance focused, there was a lot of question and answer stuff with the competitors, and the competitors would have to do/discuss different things. One competitor did a great impersonation of the host. It was pretty funny. Oh, of course there were judges, but they seemed pretty harmless.

Anyway, I love a good dance show (I loved the Wade Robson Project and the European version he did as well) so I hope the new show won't disappoint!