The Strictly Blessing

Occasionally, it’s helpful to remind ourselves why Premier Christianity runs a monthly culture column.

The idea is that these pages can spotlight something – or someone – that the wider culture outside the Church has elevated to a position of importance.

These are the subjects of the metaphorical ‘water-cooler conversations’ of our age, many of which now take place online. Beyond simply describing these phenomena, the point is to seek to understand their popularity and make sense of how they might relate to the Christian faith. Maybe they create opportunities to point to Jesus; perhaps they offer a challenge to the local or wider Church…or maybe they’re just so iconic that our ignorance of them dismantles our ability to connect with our neighbour.

I say all this because you may be wondering why this magazine is running a whole article about Strictly Come Dancing. As an unapologetic, long-term fan of the show, I’d argue that it ticks all three of the above boxes. Strictly is huge, it can teach us something about community and culture; it even points us to Jesus. 

A quick step to success

Now in its 23rd series, Strictly is a celebrity reboot of the competitive amateur dance show Come Dancing, which ran on and off from 1950 to 1998. Unlike its predecessor, Strictly’s core concept teams actors, sportspeople and otherwise unquantifiable ‘personalities’ with some of the best professional dancers on the circuit. Four judges, most of whom were not previously household names, pass judgement, with the final decisions over which pairings progress each week placed in the hands of voting viewers. 

The show launched on BBC One in May 2004, with two major stars – the late Sir Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly – as hosts. It was an instant success, drawing huge viewing figures thanks to its broad, multigenerational appeal. Strictly found a magic formula of celebrity, nostalgia and competition. Families would watch together; students would stick it on before a night out; elderly fans of the original show celebrated the return of ‘proper telly’ (while bemoaning the revealing nature of some of the outfits). Competitive dance was – it turned out – the thing that the nation had been missing from its Saturday night TV schedule.

Many other countries had a similar reaction. After the UK version was almost instantly recommissioned, the rollout of international variants began. The enormously popular US edition, Dancing with the Stars, launched a year later, and is just one of 60 Strictly spin-offs worldwide, in countries as diverse as Myanmar, Lebanon and Kazakhstan. The show is now a rare evergreen feature in global schedules. On the surface, that long-standing success seems to be due to its inter-generational appeal and rolling carousel of famous faces. Yet there are nuances and complexities to Strictly, subplots and smart, subtle touches, that keep it intriguing – and which interface with Christian ideas.

Ballroom blessings

Your perspective on dance is almost certainly influenced by your own personal capacity to execute it. Many of us are limited to the trademark figure-of-eight move pulled out at a wedding when the peer pressure gets too heavy. Yet objectively, dance done well is a beautiful thing, sometimes jaw-droppingly so. Strictly gives a platform for a great art form to be beamed into millions of living rooms every Saturday night and inspires viewers to consider putting on their own dancing shoes. A rise in participation in adult dance classes has been directly attributed to the show. 

Strictly has done more than any other TV show to challenge attitudes around disability. Could churches and Christian events learn to do likewise?

Part of Strictly’s appeal is in its inclusivity. There is an unspoken value – evocative of Chef Gusteau’s “anyone can cook” mantra in the animated movie Ratatouille – that dance really is for everyone. The show’s inclusion of contestants with disabilities and additional needs has been one of its hallmarks in recent years, with deaf contestant Rose Ayling-Ellis winning in 2021, and Chris McCausland, who is blind, crowned champion in 2024. 

Any church would affirm the importance of including people with additional needs, but Strictly goes several steps further, actively inviting and then centring them. When Ayling-Ellis and her partner Giovanni Pernice performed a contemporary rumba with a period of silent dance intended to honour the deaf community, it won a BAFTA award for the year’s most memorable TV moment (McCausland repeated the feat in one of his routines in 2024). Strictly has perhaps done more than any other television show in recent years to challenge preconceptions and attitudes around disability. Could churches, Christian events and the media learn to do likewise?

Competitors are literally joined at the hip for weeks on end and alone for long periods. Billy Graham would not think this smart

At Satellites, the Christian youth event that I help lead, the late disability campaigner Jonathan Bryan, who had severe cerebral palsy, appeared on the main stage last summer to deliver a spoken word poem. This was especially complex because Jonathan – who died in June – was only able to communicate by the movement of his eye, tracked through a special reading device. Through a pre-recorded video voiced by a young person, Jonathan was able to deliver a challenge to nearly 4,000 people about the need for Christ-like inclusion. It was an example – entirely dreamt up by Jonathan himself – of how people with additional needs can be creatively centred in a faith context, with incredibly prophetic results. This is the kind of full inclusion that moves beyond accessibility to welcome, and communicates to the disabled community that we are poorer when they are not present. Strictly is popular British culture’s strongest advocate for this important, Christian idea.

Marital murder on the dance floor

It’s naïve, of course, to suggest that Strictly should be celebrated as a straightforward paragon of virtue. Since its early years, the show has been dogged by the tabloid-coined ‘Strictly Curse’, the apparent phenomenon by which marriages and relationships are badly impacted by the close bond developed between celebrity and professional dancer. Boxer Joe Calzaghe, rugby star Ben Cohen and Countdown maths-whizz Rachel Riley are all members of this dubious club, having separated from spouses or long-term partners while, or shortly after, taking part in the show. Conversely, several professional dancers have ended their own relationships after meeting a new (dance) partner on the show. 

On the surface, it seems that Strictly often has us watching – and being entertained by – the breakdown of a marriage in real time. Of course, that’s a simplification: we don’t know how much these stories are crafted or enhanced by journalists, and we also can’t know the state of a relationship or what other factors might have contributed to its end. When Call the Midwife actress Helen George split from her husband of three years shortly before joining the show, the media conflated the story into the ‘Strictly Curse’, even though the marriage ended before she even met her dance partner. Yet let’s also be wise: the gruelling training regime places two often-beautiful people in very close contact. The dances necessitate that they are figuratively and literally joined at the hip for weeks on end, alone for long periods and regularly forced to the edge of their emotional and physical limits. Billy Graham would not think this smart.

The majority of marriages and relationships do survive Strictly. Yet the so-called ‘curse’ continues to rear its head almost every year – and prevents the show from being regarded as universally wholesome. This year the show was also plagued by a series of allegations, including drug misuse, that have resulted in two professionals leaving and the introduction of chaperones in the training rooms. In August, an unnamed male star was arrested on suspicion of rape. 

Dance – like all things that humans involve themselves in – has its dark as well as light sides. 

There are other elements of the show that are problematic for Christian viewers. Strictly’s recurrent obsession with Halloween (there’s a themed show every year) enables costumes and dance routines that might push at the edges of our comfort zones. Performers variously dress as witches, demons and even the devil himself. While engagement in the horror genre and the eventual celebration of light overcoming darkness is a legitimate Christian tradition, it’s also unhelpfully dark for many – especially those watching with children. I’m not sure the Strictly Halloween Special has ever created a direct doorway to the occult for anyone, but it’s part of a cultural trend that many might understandably want to abstain from.

While the judges occasionally provide scathing reviews, the arc of every Strictly journey is always redemptive

Similarly, Strictly’s inclusion of same-sex couples and the LGBTQ+ community may make some Christians feel uncomfortable about the show, especially when watching with children. In the new series, drag performer La Voix will almost certainly create controversy and draw online hate. Yet I’d argue that Christians have to consider if they want to be on the side of an exclusionary mob – or whether averting their children’s eyes is setting them up well for life in modern British culture. Unless you can’t get on board with a Church that welcomes all people, I’d argue this element of the show is a positive thing, contributing to a wider cultural narrative of acceptance. When Jesus behaved like that he was ridiculed, earning himself the mocking nickname “friend of…sinners” (Matthew 11:19). Two millennia later, children are growing up in a world that prizes diversity and inclusion. We don’t have to view this as a retrograde step, whatever our theological convictions on how LGBTQ+ Christians should practise their faith.

Lord of the dance

God is creator, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are endlessly creative in the way that they remake and renew the world. The weekly celebration of an art form, enhanced by extraordinarily innovative ideas and routines, echoes the awe-inspiring creativity and newness of the Trinity. Overwhelmingly, the show is about love and encouragement, and while the judges occasionally provide scathing reviews, the arc of every Strictly journey is always redemptive. Even those with two left feet are reminded as they leave the show that they’ve inspired and included legions of viewers who share their limitations.

It also models a good approach to discipleship. In the early weeks, new-to-dance celebrities stumble through the routines, looking to their mentors for help at every missed heel-placement. As the rounds continue and their confidence grows, they begin to perfect more difficult steps and increasingly demonstrate their abilities ‘out of hold’, that is, without their leader holding them up. By the final, once-nervous amateurs have mastered their art, equipped to inspire and teach others to follow in their dance steps. Yet all of this is only possible because the novices are thrown in at the deep end and learn by doing. We see little evidence on the show of classroom teaching of dance theory; the professional dancers simply take them to a studio and start walking them through the steps. It’s incredibly New Testament, when you think about it…

Again, why does any of this really matter? On one level, it doesn’t. Yet for three months each autumn, Strictly becomes the focus of conversation for millions of ordinary people around the country. It’s not fashionable enough to be held up as a cultural icon, and yet it arguably matters to far more people than most trends and short-lived fads that we so often get worked up about. The simple joy of dance endures, gets people talking and spreads a little joy. In a world rocked by division, polarisation, fear and anxiety, Strictly is a show that brings people together and makes them feel a little bit better. 

So, to the preachers I say: pepper your sermons with references to peak Paso Dobles and Len Goodman’s obsession with the Fleckerl (a dance step in the Viennese waltz, for those who were wondering). To the evangelists: be prepared to craft object lessons which show how Jesus went out in the dance-off despite attaining a 40 score. To every Christian who seeks to connect with normal people: the outlandish costumes of ‘movie week’ could be your way in. Because Strictly is just like the Christian faith: it invites all of us to join in, even if we don’t think we’re up to it. Because it’s not about how good you are, it’s about how great and divine the dance is.