This new celebrity winter sports reality show is still on the nursery slopes, but after a disappointing opener, it's starting to build up speed
If you saw the first episode of The Jump on Sunday, chances are you came away a little disappointed. It promised so much – chiefly a conveyor belt of distantly recognisable celebrities being shot several feet into the air at hundreds of miles an hour before clattering back to Earth on their faces and bleeding all over Davina McCall's lovely parka – but delivered so little.
The problems were there for everyone to see. Despite being called The Jump, nobody so much as even attempted to defy gravity for at least the first 50 minutes of the hour-long episode. The bulk of the show was taken up with a slightly dreary downhill slalom challenge that had happened several hours earlier, which meant that The Jump was basically Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment, stretched out to to interminable lengths, on skis, without anyone who could convincingly be described as a star.
And then, when the jumping part of The Jump actually came around, the disappointment was palpable. The problem with this bit is that none of the celebrities are good enough at ski-jumping to tackle a professional slope. Instead, they took to the baby jump – a 15-metre almost-slope that plops you off the end in such a comprehensively unimpressive way that it may as well make a soggy fart noise when you land. All in all, as television shows go, it wasn't exactly an unqualified success.
But as the week has worn on – and I say this incredibly tentatively – The Jump seems to be slowly finding its feet. Monday's episode was far better than Sunday's, mainly because we got to watch Sinitta have a meltdown at the prospect of sliding down a skeleton run on her face at 60mph. And Tuesday night's show was better still. Believe it or not, stuff actually happened. Henry Conway smashed a bone in his hand in seven places, had it repaired with titanium pins and was forced off the show in floods of tears. Darren Gough's skeleton attempt couldn't have gone any more violently if they'd forced him inside a tumble dryer along with a hundredweight of bricks and spikes, put it on fast spin and then shoved him down the run and – finally – someone attempted a jump that wasn't completely minuscule.
It still wasn't great telly. The tiny jump remains a big problem. I visited the set of The Jump last year and stood at the top of the smallest jump, and it was honestly terrifying enough to make my testicles retreat deep into my abdomen for approximately a week, but it just doesn't come across that way on-screen. The fact that I – and McCall, and everyone else involved in the show – have to keep repeating that, no, it really is quite scary, only makes it look more underwhelming. Hopefully, the further we get into the series, the less we'll see it being used.
That said, the show has benefited from having more space to breathe. The first episode suffered from Big Brother syndrome, where there were so many characters to introduce, and they were all ruthlessly barking over each other for more screentime, that it was all but unwatchable. But now that the crop is being whittled down, through elimination or injury, we can get to know them all a little better.
We can spend more time scrutinising their faces for signs of outright fear. We can see them crying in a heap afterwards. We can watch replay after replay of them concussing themselves by smacking their skulls on the ice. And, really, isn't that what we're all watching for? Slowly but surely, The Jump is finding its feet. As soon as it breaks those feet, and maybe a couple of arms, and loses a couple of pints of blood in the process, we might just be on to a winner. Reported by guardian.co.uk 17 hours ago.
If you saw the first episode of The Jump on Sunday, chances are you came away a little disappointed. It promised so much – chiefly a conveyor belt of distantly recognisable celebrities being shot several feet into the air at hundreds of miles an hour before clattering back to Earth on their faces and bleeding all over Davina McCall's lovely parka – but delivered so little.
The problems were there for everyone to see. Despite being called The Jump, nobody so much as even attempted to defy gravity for at least the first 50 minutes of the hour-long episode. The bulk of the show was taken up with a slightly dreary downhill slalom challenge that had happened several hours earlier, which meant that The Jump was basically Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment, stretched out to to interminable lengths, on skis, without anyone who could convincingly be described as a star.
And then, when the jumping part of The Jump actually came around, the disappointment was palpable. The problem with this bit is that none of the celebrities are good enough at ski-jumping to tackle a professional slope. Instead, they took to the baby jump – a 15-metre almost-slope that plops you off the end in such a comprehensively unimpressive way that it may as well make a soggy fart noise when you land. All in all, as television shows go, it wasn't exactly an unqualified success.
But as the week has worn on – and I say this incredibly tentatively – The Jump seems to be slowly finding its feet. Monday's episode was far better than Sunday's, mainly because we got to watch Sinitta have a meltdown at the prospect of sliding down a skeleton run on her face at 60mph. And Tuesday night's show was better still. Believe it or not, stuff actually happened. Henry Conway smashed a bone in his hand in seven places, had it repaired with titanium pins and was forced off the show in floods of tears. Darren Gough's skeleton attempt couldn't have gone any more violently if they'd forced him inside a tumble dryer along with a hundredweight of bricks and spikes, put it on fast spin and then shoved him down the run and – finally – someone attempted a jump that wasn't completely minuscule.
It still wasn't great telly. The tiny jump remains a big problem. I visited the set of The Jump last year and stood at the top of the smallest jump, and it was honestly terrifying enough to make my testicles retreat deep into my abdomen for approximately a week, but it just doesn't come across that way on-screen. The fact that I – and McCall, and everyone else involved in the show – have to keep repeating that, no, it really is quite scary, only makes it look more underwhelming. Hopefully, the further we get into the series, the less we'll see it being used.
That said, the show has benefited from having more space to breathe. The first episode suffered from Big Brother syndrome, where there were so many characters to introduce, and they were all ruthlessly barking over each other for more screentime, that it was all but unwatchable. But now that the crop is being whittled down, through elimination or injury, we can get to know them all a little better.
We can spend more time scrutinising their faces for signs of outright fear. We can see them crying in a heap afterwards. We can watch replay after replay of them concussing themselves by smacking their skulls on the ice. And, really, isn't that what we're all watching for? Slowly but surely, The Jump is finding its feet. As soon as it breaks those feet, and maybe a couple of arms, and loses a couple of pints of blood in the process, we might just be on to a winner. Reported by guardian.co.uk 17 hours ago.