In 2019, during the 14th season of America’s Got Talent, one act blazed in out of nowhere. Bustling excitedly on to the stage, the Detroit Youth Choir belted out a soaring, energetic rendition of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s song Can’t Hold Us. The performance was so powerful that the TV show’s host, Terry Crews, walked on to the stage and announced tearfully: “Every young man and woman on this stage represents me and where I came from” – before taking the unprecedented step of overriding the judges and pressing the golden buzzer himself, automatically sending the choir to the quarter finals. It was an unforgettable moment of television; and the new Disney+ series Choir follows what happened next.
If you watched America’s Got Talent or have a decent grasp of golden-buzzer etiquette, Choir probably went to the top of your must-watch list as soon as it was announced. If not, Choir is basically the story of some kids who came second in a talent show five years ago because a man in a pink suit punched a golden piece of plastic. It’s a tougher sell, in other words.
Yet even if you come to it stripped of all context, as I did, Choir has an awful lot going for it. What we have is fundamentally Last Chance U for theatre kids, and it’s as moving and gripping as you might expect.
The Detroit Youth Choir is a non-profit organisation that offers a world-class performing arts experience to inner-city children who might otherwise stray into trouble. It exists to mould and shape ambitious, mainly Black kids, giving them the confidence to break out of their preordained path in life. However, life in the Detroit Youth Choir is no cakewalk. Competition is fierce and the people who run the programme demand perfection, especially as they hunt for the next big thing after America’s Got Talent. The choir can make you, but can just as easily break you.
Leading the school is artistic director Anthony White, who has been in charge for more than 20 years. He is an interesting figure, constantly vacillating between inspiration and exasperation. He is sometimes hard on the kids – in one audition he reduces child after child to tears – but you sense that this is only because he is desperately trying to lift them beyond the level they have set for themselves. As Crews said through his tears, if just one person can believe in children like this, they can be capable of anything. This is why White is chasing the post-AGT high; he wants these young people to know what they can achieve.
Someone more cynical than me might argue, though, that the whole thing reeks of false jeopardy. White spends the entire series focused on getting the Detroit Youth Choir back into the national conversation through a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. which seems a little redundant when you take a step back and realise that he’s doing it through the prism of a six-part documentary that has been distributed through an entertainment conglomerate’s streaming platform to an audience of 150 million people.
Speaking of Disney, Choir also suffers a little from having most of its rough edges sanded off. The best examples of this genre (Last Chance U and Cheer) tend to be a little more unflinching in their examination of their subjects. They didn’t shy away from showing us how close the kids come to wrecking everything by giving over to their worst impulses. They also lingered on the uglier aspects of the adults in charge, and the fine line that exists between demanding perfection and bullying. While Choir does touch on this – at one point White offers a weak “I’m hard on these kids, but the streets will be harder” justification – it also seems willing to turn a blind eye, in favour of giving us a full-bore shot of uncomplicated aspiration.
But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t get you anyway. As with all the other shows of this genre, there is a point towards the end of Choir where you see just how hard these kids are willing to work to achieve their dreams. At that point you would have to be a monster to not end up a blubbering wreck.
Choir is available on Disney+
