REVIEW: The Voice, Week 4

It’s the final round of blind auditions, and although much of it was the same as before, the episode also became a look forward to the battle ahead. The war discourse is used way too much on this show – IT’S A SINGING CONTEST! Anyway, this week the judges had to fill their teams of 10, which added another interesting twist, as contestants had no idea when they auditioned who could or could not press their button. As the show reached its conclusion only will.i.am remained.

The finale was thoroughly enjoyable, as the programme juxtaposed two fathers-to-be competing to win the final spot. I don’t want to give too much away because you can still watch it on iPlayer (and I suggest you do), but there were tears. This brings me on to my cliché of the week courtesy of Jesse J: “you are the reason I’m doing this show”. You can tell she’s a fan of The X Factor.

As each judge completed their teams they would do a really quick recap of who they are with a little bit from the judge talking about how amazing their group is and what they’re going to do with them. At the end of the show they gave us a few more details on the following couple of weeks, what they’re calling battles. See, more war talk. So each singer will be trained and pitted against one another as the judges have to halve their groups ready for the live shows, so this week is really where the uniqueness of The Voice ends. From now on it’s just a rehashing of your existing talent show formats, but if the past month has done anything to distance itself from its’ predecessors it’s through the focus on genuine talent, and the less manufactured inter-judge frivolity.

Although I’m not sad to see the blind auditions come to an end, because they were getting awfully tedious, I think The Voice has effectively established itself as a talent show like no other. This, perhaps more so than the audition format, is down to the fact that they’re actually looking for talent and not preoccupied with filling our teles with a 90min freak show. But whether this is the final throe or the reinvention of a genre, only time will tell.