Sounds interesting Jo. Let's hope they don't just concentrate on ITV shows
I've just watched it on iplayer. Blimey, I can't believe the Will/Gareth Pop Idol final was 10 years ago!
Simon Cowell r-e-a-l-l-y wanted Gareth to win!
Personally I preferred Will, so I was glad he won. There were over 8 million votes cast on the night of the final - I wonder if Lee's mum ran up a huge phone bill that night voting for Will?
The footage of the other contestants hoisting Will aloft on their shoulders after he won reminded me of Lee's ADWD winning moment!
Just caught up with ep 2 on ITV player. The first part of the show looked at the original 'New Faces'. Interesting stuff. Then it was on to 'Britain's Got Talent', which is, I suppose the 21st century version of 'New Faces' (and 'Opp Knocks'). They showed clips from the unaired Pilot ep* of BGT and discussed how it reinvented variety for a 21st century audience. I'm a bit dubious about that since there have been three winners who are singers and two who are dancers, so not much variety.
There was a section devoted to Simon Cowell (as if we really needed one given that he's been constantly mentioned throughout the two eps we've seen so far ) in which the most interesting bit was the 20-odd year old clip of Simon as a contestant on 'Sale Of The Century'.
Then there was a section on dodgy auditions. This just seemed to be an excuse to show endless clips of bad auditions from 'X-Factor' and 'BGT'. There was a half-hearted discussion about the rights and wrongs of screening the bad auditions on TV talent shows, which (as this was a Simon Cowell produced programme) had lots of people talking about how entertaining and popular with the viewers the bad auditions are! Personally, I've never found them entertaining.
Once you've seen one bad audition, you've seen them all. Plus, it does seem to be exploitative - despite Louis Walsh's claim that 'no-one forces them to audition', the fact is, they will be put through the first three or four non-televised judging stages and, when Cowell and Co tell them they're rubbish, they'll be contacted again next year and invited to re-audition.
One thing I liked about the TV casting shows was that they didn't show rubbish auditionees and the auditions only covered two episodes, rather than the 6 weeks or so you get with 'X-Factor'.
Next week's episode of 'The Talent Show Story' will be covering 'Opportunity Knocks'. That should be interesting.
*There was a pilot ep filmed of ADWD. Apparently, the boys didn't wear those black vests in that - it was just coats and bare chests! I wonder why they decided to bring in the vests? Perhaps the BBC bods were nervous about showing male nipples on prime time telly...or perhaps they thought bare chestedness gave Lee an unfair advantage!
Not sure if anyone else kept up with this but it was the last episode on saturday and mainly focused on the judges and their differences of opinions. However it then moved on to the BBC with them realising that the talent show topic was making for popular Saturday telly. They featured Fame academy and then there was a Lee-tle treat! It showed Graham opening the ADWD final and you saw Lee, Keith and Lewis at the top of the stairs but that was it. They showed Connie winning and the title page of IDA but it was a bonus to see Lee! 
I haven't caught up with this week's ep yet, but I'm glad to hear that there was a brief glimpse of Lee.
I have to say that this series has been more like 'The Simon Cowell Story' than 'The Talent Show Story'. I appreciate that he produced the series (maybe that's the problem - he was calling the shots), but it would have been nice to have had a more even handed approach to the content, rather than having acres of footage of X-Factor and the other Cowell shows.
For me, the most interesting parts were the ones about the non-Cowell shows like Opportunity Knocks and New Faces. I loved the postal voting sytem on those shows and the 'clap-o-meter', not to mention the 'Spaghetti Junction' scoreboard on 1980s New Faces!
I thought the segments on Hughie Green and Lena Zavaroni were fascinating, though both seemed a bit rushed. Perhaps if they'd cut down some of the acres of X-Factor and BGT stuff, they could have devoted more time to other things. The Child Stars segment (which included Lena's story) could have done with having a whole episode devoted to it. Ditto Hughie Green/Opp Knocks. Even the casting shows could have covered a whole ep (there were four on the BBC after all). Incidentally, was the ITV 'Grease' casting show mentioned? The one which was trounced in the ratings by ADWD?
That's odd, considering that other (non-Cowell) short-lived shows were mentioned, and the 'Grease' show was ITV's first attempt at a casting show.
Jedward were featured in the ep where they had a segment about talent show contestants who were 'entertainers' rather than singers. I can't remember if they were actually interviewed though. It's a shame that very few former contestants were interviewed. I think it would have been interesting to hear about the shows from a contestant's point of view (and the few who were interviewed did give some interesting insights - I loved Joe Pasquale's admission that he 'manipulated' the postal voting on New Faces ).
Yes, it was a Cowell production - hence the emphasis on Cowell and his shows.
