Gary Barlow Talks Let It Shine at MIPTV

BBC Worldwide launched the Let It Shine format to the international market in Cannes with Gary Barlow, who developed the talent competition in association with BBC Studios for BBC One.

Barlow said the concept originated following a conversation with Guy Freeman, editor of formats and special events. “We have worked together on quite a few TV shows over the years. We were chatting about ideas for TV, about what I wanted to do next. I was ready to go back into TV. I’d done X Factor for three years and had really enjoyed that, but I was ready to do something else on TV. I was in the middle of trying to come up with a musical featuring the music of Take That. I knew I needed a band to be in this musical. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could talent search it?”

Freeman and his format development team at BBC Studios started developing the concept. “The unique thing is the five stars rating system,” Freeman told TV Formats. “We really refined that. We didn’t want to start with a large pool of people. Because of Gary’s experience being in a band, we wanted to get them into bands quite early on, so they could start to form those internal bonds. And put them in a battle of the bands in our live shows.”

Barlow is one of the judges on the series, alongside Dannii Minogue, Martin Kemp and several guest judges, among them Amber Riley. “I wanted people who had musical experience, and also had pop experience,” Barlow said. “Those two worlds don’t often meet. Danni Minogue fit perfectly. She’s been in musicals, she’s been a pop artist, she’d had the credentials of being involved in talent shows for many years. That brings you the ability to see people who have a small flame—spotting that potential is very important. Martin Kemp, he was my boy-band era. I wanted someone who had been part of that band formation. Amber was one of our early judges—she’s in a musical at the moment. [I wanted] people who aren’t just talking about it, but people who have done it.”

Freeman added, “The judges themselves, their only aim is to bring out the best in someone. The judges aren’t arguing or bickering. They speak with warmth and honesty. They don’t give people false hope. It’s a very authentic process. The other thing we do is we make [the contestants] work with a leading artist, so they almost become a cast or an ensemble. They have to play second fiddle to someone else standing at the front. That came from something Gary told me way back about his early years. That’s an important part, learning from experienced people. The bands battle against each other. For the bottom two bands in the public vote, the judges can save half of them, so there’s a nice little twisting mechanism in the live shows as well.”