Have you spent any time in the last month either outside or watching TV? If so, you surely cannot have failed to notice the second coming of Christ, a.k.a. the first season of the Finnish version of crap ‘talent’ show X-Factor has just started. Judging by the amount of marketing on display, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this momentous occasion was the dawn of a new historical epoch, ensuring that January 2010 was a month that would be remembered for all time as much as July 1789, April 1945 and May 1968. As it is, it was well-below average even by today’s standards.

Have you spent any time in the last month either outside or watching TV? If so, you surely cannot have failed to notice the second coming of Christ, a.k.a. the first season of the Finnish version of crap ‘talent’ show X-Factor has just started. Judging by the amount of marketing on display, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this momentous occasion was the dawn of a new historical epoch, ensuring that January 2010 was a month that would be remembered for all time as much as July 1789, April 1945 and May 1968. As it is, it was well-below average even by today’s standards.

Judged by music industry don Gugi Kokljuschkin, violinist Linda Lampenius-Cullberg a.k.a. sex kitten Linda Brava, and Renne Korppila, Finland’s answer to Henry Rollins, the format is of course exactly the same as all the other X-Factors and reality shows everywhere else. Several thousand wannabe singers congregate at one of the audition locations – in this case Helsinki, Tampere, Rovaniemi and Kuopio – in the hope of being amongst the least hopeless singers and maybe going through to the next round.

A significant proportion of the first episode last week was spent having high-angle long shots of lots of people standing in the cold, crossing their arms like they were attending some kind of fascist rally, and shouting ‘X-Factorrr! Wooooo!’ Simpletons the lot of ‘em. Otherwise, we spent more than half an hour getting to know the three judges and watching presenter Heikki Paasonen sliding about on the ice and running everywhere. He seemed to be a most excitable young man, albeit with the tact of a mother hippo separated from her young.

What we didn’t get to see, unfortunately, was what we actually tuned in to watch – people singing. I emphasise singing here, as opposed to caterwauling. We got plenty of that, I can tell you. So far, this is a rather snide show. Focusing on three contestants who clearly had absolutely no chance what-so-ever in getting through to the next round and making fun of them was low-brow telly at its worst (or best, depending on your point of view).

Add to them two other acts – an acapella four-piece consisting of as fine a selection of grinning, over-enthusiastic eedjits as has ever graced our screens, and a 16-year old named Peter “Pete” Nyberg – and that was pretty much the whole thing. The latter of those two, by the way, was an average performer who is now being promoted as this week’s teen heartthrob. He needs a better nickname. He could’ve called himself Peter “Vocal Avenger” Nyberg. Or “Baby-faced Assassin”. Something like that.

Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned, but the whole point of the first show in a series should be to draw you in and make you want to tune in next week. Even people who dig reality shows like this would have a hard time getting excited about it. To his credit, Renne at some point looked a bit peeved as well, presumably thinking something along the lines of ‘why are they sending us these idiots?’ On the other hand, he might have just burped up his lunch. If Simon Cowell saw this he’d be devastated. What does the ‘X’ even mean? X marks the spot? XXX-rated? Or just XXXX off?

Nick Barlow