Will Harris is not impressed with X Factor USA

X Factor USA. Can we talk?Just when you thought TV talent shows couldn’t get any more hyped, Simon Cowell has taken his winning X Factor formula and launched it stateside, where – in a move perfectly befitting the US – it has been supersized. Have you seen it yet? Everything about the show is bigger than our version, from the contestants’ voices, to the calibre of the judges (L.A. Reid, the former Def Jam CEO who gave the world Rihanna, occupies the same position on the panel as Louis Walsh, the former leprechaun who gave the world Jedward, does on ours), to the prize on offer at the end.

Even the contestants’ sob stories are more dramatic; our lot may shed a few crocodile tears over poor old nanna, but they ain’t got nothing on X Factor USA, where one woman’s dad died while she was at boot camp! I’m not messing. She didn’t even tell anyone, just carried on singing!

So as if it wasn’t enough that I once again find my weekends dominated by the Cowell-branded juggernaut that is the British version of the show, I now find myself having to donate yet more of my non-working hours to catching up with the antics of our trans-Atlantic cousins as they warble their way towards a $5million recording contract. This has left me with several questions I would like answered.
Question number one: what in the Sam Hill has happened to Steve Jones’ accent? His once lovely, lilting tone seems to have left The Valleys in search of Silicon Valley, and all it took was a few sun-soaked months straddling the San Andreas fault. Steve, you are from Rhondda; you are not time-sharing a voice with Ryan Seacrest.

“Everything about the show is bigger than our version”

Question number two: why in America, a country obsessed with its own mental well-being, are they putting children as young as 12 through the emotional wringer of the audition process? Surely Willow Smith has a few good years left in her before the pop machine demands another infant be sacrificed to a future life of solitude and walking around with tissue boxes on their feet.

Question number three: why, considering that most of their contestants have better voices than most of ours, do they all look like carbon copies of each other? Ok sure, there are one or two novelty acts in the mix – Dexter Haygood (homeless bum from from Memphis who spends most of each set high-kicking imaginary parole officers) and Brian ‘Astronomical Kid’ Bradley (14-year-old rapper stuck midway between a Cheerios commercial and juvie hall) – but they are otherwise an unimaginative lot, all square-jawed Hispanics and honey-blonde Christian farmgirls. Maybe I’m biased but I can’t help but feel that, despite X Factor USA trying to deliver a more powerful punch, just like Steve Jones’ accent it remains a pale imitation of the British version.