Bosses at ITV are reportedly very keen to find a new project for legendary comedian, Dawn French, after she impressed them so much during her judging role on Superstar, according to the Sun newspaper.

French, who is best known for her leading roles in French and Saunders and The Vicar Of Dibley, won over the audience during the Andrew Lloyd Webber talent show to find the new Jesus in his musical, despite having no previous reality talent show experience.
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So here we are tonight for the final of Superstar and everyone was in their finery – Amanda Holden was dressed like an extra from Starlight Express, Jason had a tux on, Dawn was wearing a lovely sparkly top and Andrew had one too many buttons on his shirt. The opening song this night was Hosanna from Jesus Christ Superstar and it was good to hear the boys sing a song from the show but once again I feel that Roger has the presence to play Jesus but at this point I feel it’s definitely going to be Ben.

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So last night, I was away from Superstar and my favourite contestant, Jesus lookalike Nathan James, was eliminated mainly because Andrew Lloyd-Webber took him to task over a tweet someone made of him wearing a Crown of Thorns. Anyway, we’re now down to the final four who all got to sing a song from the actual show one of them will be appearing ‘What’s the Buzz’ in which I decided that Roger is my current favourite to win, before we saw that tonight, Dawn French will be offering some sort of advice to each of the finalists.

First up was Rory, who performed a very mediocre version of Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight which the crowd when nuts over, but not before Dawn told him not to worry about his height then gave him a troll. Jason kicked off proceedings by telling Rory that he has great tone, delivered a brilliant performance and has a special vocal quality before describing him as the rock star in the competition. Read more & comment »

Ben Forster
The Story So Far: Sunderland’s own Ben Forster, a former musical star who got through to boot camp on the X-Factor back in 2009, has impressed throughout the competition. Mel C in particular has praised his honest performances while Andrew Lloyd-Webber has complemented him on his consistency.
Best Performance: Ben’s performance of R.E.M’s Everybody Hurts bought Mel to tears and it made her say that she really wanted to act beside him in the production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Worst Performance: Ben’s performances have universally been praised by the panel however his first night performance of Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know was criticised by Andrew as he didn’t think Ben connected with the lyrics.
What are his chances?: Ben is one of only two never to have been part of the sing-off before so he obviously has a lot of audience support and the judges’ unanimous praise also adds to the fact that he goes all the way. I personally think that at the moment he has to be the favourite as the combination of positive comments and viewer votes usually add up to the winner of the show.
My Thoughts: While agree that Ben has been consistent, he really doesn’t do anything for me and I really couldn’t picture him as Jesus. Read more & comment »

I really feel I need salvation after sitting through a week’s worth of Superstar however I have enjoyed unintentional hilarity via Amanda Holden’s disastrous turn as host especially last night when she messed up the voting line numbers and had to repeat them. Tonight Holden was a given a helping hand as all of the Jesuses stood awkwardly on stage as she recited their numbers before breaking into a very shouty rendition of The Who’s Pinball Wizard.

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I’m starting to think that the opening numbers that the potential Jesuses sing on Superstar now all have a religious theme as was witnessed by them howling their way through Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’. As Lloyd-Webber basically rubbished the format of the show we will now be having our eliminations at the end of each episode so we heard the numbers to vote for our favourite lad each night however we heard two different sets of numbers as Amanda Holden completely ballsed up the simplest of tasks. As I’m having to watch Superstar every night I’ve noticed how truly horrendous Holden is in the hosting role and I do wonder if the only reason she’s there is as she has some association with the Simon Cowell empire.

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As always Superstar kicked off with a random group performance of a song that isn’t in the musical that these men are auditioning to take the lead role in however at least Coldplay’s ‘Vida La Vida’ does have lyrics about missionaries in a foreign field and Jerusalem bells-a-ringing. After the usual rigmarole over who was safe and who was in the bottom two it came down to David Hunter against last night’s saved contestant Tim Prottey-Jones. As the two boys went down to get the nightly tips from Andrew Lloyd-Webber he surprised us all by saying that he’ll only make his decision about the elimination after he’s heard both the sing-off and the two boys’ nightly performances. The two did there best on ‘The Long and Winding Road’ however, and I’m sorry to be using a talent show cliché, I think Tim’s grown more as a performer while David’s a little bit too clean cut to play Jesus.

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Andrew Lloyd-Webber opened the third live show of Superstar by saying it’s going to be a very exciting night, but I already had a feeling that I would be able to sue him under the Trade Descriptions Act. Before we had the token opening performance from the boys, which turned out to be a fairly saucy rendition of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band complete with different coloured pocket handkerchiefs, Amanda interviewed the judges where Andrew gave a very detailed description of the plot of the show, while Dawn French oddly offered the boy that got voted off a horse and some double glazing. Read more & comment »

Oddly the second episode of Superstar kicked off with an elimination as Amanda Holden robotically revealed who was in the bottom two which turned out to be Dirk and Afnan. On advising the boys how to tackle one of the most emotional songs he’s ever written, Memory from Cats, he advised Dirk to make the song his own while Afnan had to worry about his pitch. Once they’d both done their best musical leading man bit it was up to his Lordship to save his favourite eventually picking Dirk and sending Afnan home though disappointingly there was no elaborate dismissal in the vein of the Dorthys handing back their shoes on Over the Rainbow.

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There are some programmes that I feel have been talked about for months before they finally appear and Superstar is one of those shows. If you’ve been living under a rock it sees Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber try to find a leading man for his new arena tour of Jesus Christ Superstar which already has a big name cast attached to it including Mel C, Tim Minchin and err… Chris Moyles. Despite casting Radio 1′s most notorious DJ, Lloyd-Webber describes the casting process as deadly serious as he could make the career of one of these young men or at least they could follow in the footsteps of Joseph star Lee Mead and marry the female member of the panel, so maybe if their lucky Mel C will be looking for a new man.

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So now the football is finished and the tennis has almost come to an end it seems that there are tons of new shows kicking off this week so it’s been a struggle to whittle them down to five however below are my final choices.

Superstar (ITV1, Sat 7:25pm & Sun,8pm)
Saturday nights have seemed awfully quiet since The Voice and Britain’s Got Talent left us back in May thankfully until The X-Factor returns we have a stopgap in the form of Superstar. In fact it does seem that Superstar has been coming for a long time now ever since Andrew Lloyd-Webber announced his intention of finding a lead to his new production of Jesus Christ Superstar which is set to open at the 02. It seems that his Lordship has defected to ITV after several years of finding talent on BBC1 but maybe this time the casting process is a little bit too controversial for the Beeb so Graham Norton has been replaced by Amanada Holden as the host of this endeavour.

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