“It’s Strictly’s 20th anniversary this year, we’ve been on telly for 20 years!” said a beaming Tess Daly when she picked up the show’s Bafta for best entertainment programme in May.
After a seemingly triumphant 2023 series, the Strictly team was ebullient, ready to celebrate two decades at the forefront of British popular culture in 2024. But a cloud has engulfed Strictly’s sequined world, after the BBC confirmed last month that Giovanni Pernice would not be part of the professional lineup for this year’s series.
The 33-year-old Italian dancer has been fighting “serious complaints” about alleged “threatening and abusive behaviour”, after the actor Amanda Abbington – his partner in last year’s series – quit the show after five weeks.
Media experts say that after a difficult few months for the BBC, the makers of Strictly will be under extreme pressure to make its 20th anniversary a success if they are to avoid tarnishing one of the corporation’s strongest brands.
“The row is really not good for the BBC,” said the crisis PR consultant and author Mark Borkowski. “It’s going to give them a lot of headaches [and] put more pressure on the next series being really top – and if it isn’t top, then we’ll return to this as one of the factors that possibly has degraded it.”
The row came to the surface dramatically last month after the legal firm Carter-Ruck said it had contacted the BBC regarding “numerous serious complaints” about Pernice’s alleged behaviour while filming Strictly, adding that the BBC was “now in the process of evidence gathering”.
At the time, the BBC issued a statement addressing “media reports about a high-profile show”, and urging people “not to indulge in speculation” while an internal inquiry was in progress. It promised to handle any complaints with “care, fairness and sensitivity” to all sides.
Pernice – the show’s premier male pro who has reached four finals in his nine years – issued a statement saying he looked forward to clearing his name and thanking fans for their support. “No one is more ambitious for my dance partners than me. I have always striven to help them be the very best dancers they can be. This has always come from a place of love and wanting to win – for me and my dance partners,” he said.
The BBC response to the controversy had left a vacuum “being filled by thousands of commentators, on TikTok and social media, driving this as a trend”, said Borkowski.
“At times you just want to see a bit more bravery, in terms of not hiding behind procedure,” he said. “Arguably that is what they have to do, but the BBC does always seem to be slightly defensive.”
He added: “I think this story has still got a long way to run. While various parties are filtering out narratives on it, it’s not going to go away.”
Strictly has been celebrated as one of Britain’s cultural touchstones, an annual show that brings multiple generations together and reflects the diversity of the nation. Last year a same-sex partnership lost narrowly in the final, while the moves of 79-year-old Angela Rippon showed age is just a number.
It has also been credited with combating ableism – in 2021 Pernice won the glitterball trophy with Rose Ayling-Ellis, the first deaf contestant to feature on the show, while former contestants include the Paralympian Jonnie Peacock and JJ Chalmers, the TV presenter injured in a bomb blast in Afghanistan.
The row is likely to be giving the BBC senior management a headache, given its importance to the broadcaster, said Steven Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of Westminster. “Strictly is always mentioned by BBC apparatchiks when they are defending the licence fee because it brings the nation together, gets high ratings and does the entertainment job of the Reithian principle to inform, educate and entertain,” he said.
But he added that, in his view, the row was unlikely to cause lasting damage. “I think the show itself is bigger than any one of its particular participants. As long as the BBC manages it in an appropriate manner, and it seems to me they are, I don’t see it as doing any kind of permanent damage at all.”
