Sweatin' to an oldie: WE tv takes ABC's lead
12/05/06 10:12 AM
By ED BARK
Everyone now wishes they'd gotten in on the ground floor. But no one could have foreseen the phenomenon that Dancing with the Stars has become.
So what to do? Follow in the same footsteps, but with a different spin. WE tv's eight-episode Dirty Dancing, premiering Wed., Dec. 6 (9 p.m. central, 10 eastern), cannily double-dips by also seizing on the evergreen appeal of the hit 1987 feature.
The show's Tom Bergeron is a chubbed-up Cris Judd, survivor of both a marriage to Jennifer Lopez and the 2003 ABC reality series I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! Which he won!
"Who better to host this sultry dance-off?" WE (Women's Entertainment) asks in press materials. Oh I dunno. Joe Piscopo maybe?
Dirty Dancing the movie starred Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey as gyrating Johnny Castle and G-rated Frances "Baby" Houseman. The 18 women finalists in the TV series would never settle for a dowdy old name like Frances. WE only reveals their first names, which include the likes of Charlie, Isis, Jia, Klair, Liwen Stuart, Szilvi and Vakisha.
Six "hot" male pros, including "professed perfectionist" Artem, each get three women to train in the art of sweatily seductive bump-and-grind. The show's Jan. 24th finale, already taped, will find the six surviving female partners competing for an unspecified professional dance contract.
Instead of a full premiere episode, WE sent only a brief "Sizzle Reel" that begins with Judd pitching the show from a horse farm.
"Their journey will not be easy," he says of the 18 competitors, sifted from an initial field of 30.
The penultimate Episode 7 (on Jan. 17th) sounds positively heart-pounding, in print at least. It's said that "haughty hip-hopper Brandon takes fireball Katie, easygoing Jia and determined dreamer Isis through a unique form of hip-hop with bad-ass choreographer Eddie Garcia. After the girls endure Brandon's abusive, competitive and pompous attitude, Brandon is forced to face the music. It's an unexpected turn of events in the end that shows him that it may be time to loosen up and tender a few props!"
To which we say, "Ooh WE!"
Look for DD to light up the li'l network's ratings, though. Even a relatively paltry one million viewers an episode would make this a mega-hit in WE's ongoing throwdown with Lifetime and Oxygen. They're all scratching and clawing for the hearts and minds of today's discriminating women viewers. Sometimes you have to play a little dirty.
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