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Strictly fans divided over Will Mellor’s dance to iconic ‘Madchester’ songs
"What in the GCSE Drama is going on here?"
Emily Sergeant -
12th December 2022 
Strictly Come Dancing viewers have been left divided over Will Mellor’s Madchester-inspired Couple’s Choice routine.
The Stockport-born actor – who is best known for his role on the BBC sitcom Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, as well as in Hollyoaks, Line of Duty, No Offence, and Broadchurch, and as Harvey Gaskell on Manchester-based ITV soap Coronation Street – and his dance partner Nancy Xu had earned themselves top spot on the leaderboard for past two weeks in a row.
But after yesterday’s semi final, they unfortunately found themselves in last place.
Many fans are saying a big part of the pair’s placing on the bottom of the leaderboard last night had to do with their Couple’s Choice routine – which was inspired by the legendary Madchester music scene.
With all competing couples performing two dances last night in the fight to make it to next week’s grand final, Mellor and Xu initially took to the floor to perform a dramatic Paso Doble, but their scores added up to be the lowest of the first round after the judges had a fair few critiques of the routine.
It was then the pair’s turn to perform their Couple’s Choice routine – which was added to the list of dances on Strictly a couple of years back, and gives the contestants one opportunity to choose any dance style to perform, with the routines tending to have a theme and choreography inspired by something personal or meaningful to them.
Couple’s Choice routines are often some of the highest-scoring dances of the series, but this wasn’t exactly the case for Will Mellor.
Will explained in the VT before the performance that he was inspired by the city of Manchester and the legendary Madchester music scene.
With a backdrop of a Metrolink tram stop, and the couple aptly dressed in bucket hats, Will’s Couple’s Choice routine combined his love for his hometown with his passion for 90s music, and was performed to a medley of Stone Roses and Happy Mondays songs.
Fools Gold and Step On were just two of the iconic songs the actor performed to.
Going on to receive a score of 38, the routine went down better with the judges than their earlier Paso Doble – with Anton du Beke declaring that Will “smashed the place up,” Shirley Ballas calling it a “daddy cool dance”, and Craig Revel Horwood saying it ended up going “very well” despite being initially nervous about it.
Not only that, but Happy Mondays’ maraca-shaking hype man Bez was even in the audience on the night, and seemed pretty chuffed with the routine when the TV cameras panned over to him.
But despite the judges and Bez being pretty positive about the performance, fans on social media were a little more divided.
Lots of viewers panned the performance and labelled it “dad dancing”
Read more:
- Will Mellor and Kym Marsh announced as first contestants on Strictly Come Dancing 2022
- A friendly reminder that there’s a takeaway called Jack Grillish in Manchester
- You can go on a festive tour of the Coronation Street set this Christmas
Featured Image – BBC
