Week 2 of Tumble was an improvement on the pilot show of week 1 not so much the performances, but the show itself, it’s structure, the presenter and the judges.
This week the contestants carried on with week 2 of the Hoop and Floor routines. There was nothing majorly impressive this week, with the aerial routines, the contestants can only do so much and on floor there was a lot of acro and dancing. The judges appeared to have loosened up a little too, and seemed more comfortable.
I imagine that a lot of feedback from week one must have been taken into account by the BBC as early into the programme they began to explain more of what was to come, including Beam, Parallel Bars and Trampoline. Fingers crossed that performances on beam aren’t set to music so that the contestants can more so face the beam as the real deal, probably unlikely.
The gold winning English team from the Commonwealth Games Claudia Fragapane, Hannah Whelan, Kelly Simm and Ruby Harrold were briefly introduced. A performance followed led by Beth Tweddle featuring juniors and espoirs such as Amy Tinkler, Catherine Lyons, Georgia Mae Fenton, Ryley Taylor and Lucy Stanhope. It was nice to see Beth back in action, even if it was to do simple gymnastics. We enjoyed the Nadia / Nastia Adidas advertisement-esque look of the bar sequence.
Then came the big face off to determine which contestant would go through to week 3. Contestants Peter Duncan and Andrea McLean were to perform a handspring on vault (with the use of a trampette). Both had scored the lowest in the competition, with McLean being the first contestant to visibly make a mistake in her performance. She performed a straddle through Vault while Duncan performed a handspring, with a fall on the landing. Head Judge Nadia Comaneci made the decision to keep Duncan for another week, sending McLean home.
Overall, the show was still enjoyable but nothing stood out, there was possibly less artistic gymnastics in this weeks episode. We’re looking forward to next week to see how the beam will be handled.