Shall we dance?

‘Blimey! How on earth did they think of that?’ is unlikely to be anyone’s response to Our Dancing Town (BBC2, Tuesday). A few years ago, The Great British Bake Off was adapted into The Great British Sewing Bee by the simple process of fitting another domestic activity to the same formula. Now — after what I imagine was a brain-storming session lasting approximately 30 seconds — the BBC has taken the idea, structure and tone of Gareth Malone’s singing programmes and applied them to a series about dance. Enthusiastic evangelist for the life-changing potential of his chosen art form? Lots of initial sceptics dolefully shaking their heads and insisting that it can’t be done? Triumphant outcome in which the ordinary folk amaze themselves by what they accomplish? Check, check and check.

In this case, the enthusiastic evangelist is Steve Elias, a cheerfully if unexpectedly tubby figure who’s appeared in many West End musicals — and whose mission here is to get the people of Yorkshire to celebrate their home towns through the medium of interpretive dance.

For the first episode, Steve pitched up in Barnsley, where, as the son of a South Wales bricklayer, he was able to reassure the locals that he was as working-class as them. He also heard plenty of stories from the good old days when 15-year-old boys set off to the pit every morning at 5.20 a.m. and three Yorkshire miners a week were killed at work.

At this stage, of course, the consensus was that Steve’s plan to get Barnsley dancing could only be described as ‘raving bonkers’. But, of course too, he was not to be deterred — sticking firmly to his belief that, because everybody loves dancing really, he’d be able to assemble a cast big and keen enough for a spectacular choreographed piece through the city streets.