Harvey Goldsmith is a famous promoter who has represented countess music stars and was one of the main people behind Live Aid. Despite this though he has decided to give up six months of his time to work with various lapses acts and artists to try and kick start their career. It is clear Harvey has the experience to be able to give good advice and open doors, but are the acts themselves willing and able to listen to what they are being told.
In a pitch that clearly used something like "It's The Apprentice meets Celebrity Pop Idol", this show did offer the usual reality show fireworks that one expects with a strong central character and real people competing within their world. In reality though the show was a very mixed bag and although it had some good moments or individually good episodes it generally isn't that good. It didn't help that the flagship episode with the biggest name of the series (Sam Mumba) was pretty poor. Most of the fireworks happen outside of the main scenes with Harvey really only coming across tough and direct in the bits where he talks to camera we never really see much in the way of talking with Harvey and Samantha face to face. This makes the show pretty dull and takes away the fireworks because it just seemed like Harvey was being tough for the camera but we're missing where the "action" is supposed to be.
After this rather drab start I only gave the series a few more looks because it may just have been an issue with Mumba refusing to let stuff be seen or for her just genuinely not being that bothered by the project (or her career either). Unfortunately, although other episodes were a bit better, the same issues remained. This led me to think that maybe the problem was Harvey himself. Perhaps he actually isn't the tough, uncompromising manager that the show requires maybe he is a good manager who works with his people, encourages and tries to keep the shouting to a minimum? Good for real life perhaps but not if you're trying to emulate Alan Sugar's role within The Apprentice. This shows because it is clear that the makers realise very early on that they were not getting what they wanted and so they filmed lots of him talking to the camera in a stern way. However in these he is so deliberate and so active with his hands you can tell it was after several takes where he had been told "Harvey, can we make it tougher and sterner?" because he does sound like he has said his sound-bite twenty times before it has gone in the can.
I assume the show underperformed because channel 4 silently shifted it from 9pm to 11:30 on a week night (have Harvey said of Mumba, "you don't publicise a failure". It is an average show throughout and I didn't hate it but didn't feel interested enough to make a point of watching it. Perhaps Harvey should applied some of his own advice to the show although he is more about promotion than perhaps substance, the former being fine, just the latter where it all falls down.
In a pitch that clearly used something like "It's The Apprentice meets Celebrity Pop Idol", this show did offer the usual reality show fireworks that one expects with a strong central character and real people competing within their world. In reality though the show was a very mixed bag and although it had some good moments or individually good episodes it generally isn't that good. It didn't help that the flagship episode with the biggest name of the series (Sam Mumba) was pretty poor. Most of the fireworks happen outside of the main scenes with Harvey really only coming across tough and direct in the bits where he talks to camera we never really see much in the way of talking with Harvey and Samantha face to face. This makes the show pretty dull and takes away the fireworks because it just seemed like Harvey was being tough for the camera but we're missing where the "action" is supposed to be.
After this rather drab start I only gave the series a few more looks because it may just have been an issue with Mumba refusing to let stuff be seen or for her just genuinely not being that bothered by the project (or her career either). Unfortunately, although other episodes were a bit better, the same issues remained. This led me to think that maybe the problem was Harvey himself. Perhaps he actually isn't the tough, uncompromising manager that the show requires maybe he is a good manager who works with his people, encourages and tries to keep the shouting to a minimum? Good for real life perhaps but not if you're trying to emulate Alan Sugar's role within The Apprentice. This shows because it is clear that the makers realise very early on that they were not getting what they wanted and so they filmed lots of him talking to the camera in a stern way. However in these he is so deliberate and so active with his hands you can tell it was after several takes where he had been told "Harvey, can we make it tougher and sterner?" because he does sound like he has said his sound-bite twenty times before it has gone in the can.
I assume the show underperformed because channel 4 silently shifted it from 9pm to 11:30 on a week night (have Harvey said of Mumba, "you don't publicise a failure". It is an average show throughout and I didn't hate it but didn't feel interested enough to make a point of watching it. Perhaps Harvey should applied some of his own advice to the show although he is more about promotion than perhaps substance, the former being fine, just the latter where it all falls down.