Strictly Come Dancing will delay its launch date amid schedule changes in the wake of the Queen’s death, the BBC has announced. The new series of the dance competition was due to return to screens on 17 September, two days before the late monarch’s state funeral on 19 September. The first show will be on 23 September, followed by the first live show on 24 September.
The schedule shift is one of many in the days leading up to the state funeral; broadcasters, including ITV, have changed programming. Netflix will suspend filming of The Crown on 19 September, the day of the funeral, as a mark of respect.
Contestants this year include football manager and former Arsenal player Tony Adams, musician Matt Goss, Paralympian athlete Ellie Simmonds and the wildlife cameraman and Countryfile presenter Hamza Yassin. It is the 20th series of the dancing competition and will celebrate the BBC’s 100th anniversary with a special themed show, in which contestants will dance to “a theme tune from an iconic BBC programme or in tribute to one of the BBC’s most loved services”.
The BBC’s decision to postpone Strictly Come Dancing follows the revelation that the late monarch was a fan. JJ Chalmers, who was a contestant in 2020 said in a BBC interview that his father, a former chaplain to the Queen, had received a letter from the monarch, with a handwritten note to say how much she had enjoyed watching JJ on Strictly Come Dancing.
“One of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen, following the death of her husband, my father had written to her. And she returned a letter, which was typed and had all the expected notes with it,” Chalmers told Huw Edwards on Monday’s BBC coverage of the late Queen’s journey south from Balmoral.
“At the bottom, there was a handwritten message. It said: ‘I’ve just realised that the JJ Chalmers that I’ve been watching on the coverage of my husband’s funeral is the same JJ Chalmers that you told me of being injured all those years ago.’ And also a line that said ‘and the same JJ Chalmers I enjoyed watching on Strictly Come Dancing.’”
