Adam Miller
Published November 22, 2025 7:30am
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It was as good as anything you’d pay an eye-watering price to see in the West End (Picture: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire)
Tonight, Strictly Come Dancing makes its annual pilgrimage to Blackpool- and it’s set to be one of the most glorious nights in the show’s history, thanks largely to two stars.
It’s hard to imagine what this series of Strictly would have looked like without Lewis Cope and Amber Davies stepping in. These latecomers are, by significant distance, the best dancers in the competition.
They are in a completely different league, performing at a level no one else in the contest could dream of reaching. Albeit with previous dance experience, Lewis and Amber have been absolutely vital to this year’s contest.
Lewis is the only contestant to have earned a perfect 40, with one of – if not the – best dances I’ve ever seen on Strictly.
On Halloween Week, the former soap star and his partner Katya Jones delivered a captivating Couple’s Choice routine to an eerie cover of Radiohead’s Creep.
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It was as good as anything you’d pay an eye-watering price to see in the West End.
The synchronicity, the charisma, the sheer skill – it was unbelievably impressive and will undoubtedly be the defining dance of this series, right up there with Jay McGuinness’s Tango, Caroline Flack’s show dance to Angels, and Rose Ayling-Ellis’s BAFTA winning silent symphony.
I imagine Lewis won’t be the only member of the perfect-40 club after tonight (Picture: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire)
Outside of that routine, only one other dance has truly blown me away: Karen Carney’s debut Jive, which shocked everyone and unexpectedly topped the very first leaderboard.
Carney has been a revelation this year – but she hasn’t been consistent.
I imagine Lewis won’t be the only member of the perfect-40 club after tonight. With the blockbuster production and electric energy pulsing through the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, it’s understandable that the judges often become more generous with their 10 paddles.
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Previous Page Next PageAnd it’s about time Amber and her partner Nikita Kuzmin landed a flawless score Every single week she has delivered, but her Paso Doble to Dream On by Aerosmith last week was utterly breathtaking – completely unmissable from start to finish.
Yet the former Love Islander has already found herself in the bottom two this series: proving that previous dance training isn’t always an advantage on Strictly; it can be a curse.
Personally, I want ER star Alex Kingston and Johannes Radebe to lift the Glitterball – who earn my vote every week.
Having prior experience can be a curse on Strictly Come Dancing (Picture: BBC/Guy Levy)
Their chemistry is my favourite element of the entire series. Every week, Alex seems astonished by her own performance and the judges’ feedback. I adore them both individually – but together, they’re gold.
But at the very least, Lewis and Amber deserve to make the semi-final, and one of them should absolutely be in the final, which this year will only have three couples due to the withdrawal of Neighbours star Stefan Dennis.
Even with some middling scores, YouTube sensation George Clarke is still the hot favourite to win Strictly Come Dancing – which I’m not mad about. I have a lot of affection for George: his warmth, his vulnerability, and the fact he’s genuinely one of the dancers I most enjoy watching.
Still, George and Alex alone wouldn’t have made this series such a phenomenal one. It would have been lost without the extraordinary talent of Lewis and Amber – a truth that I think will become even more abundantly clear tonight on the Blackpool stage.
Both Lewis and Amber faced a much greater mountain to climb to win over public support from the start. Each has been plagued by comments about their previous dance experience, as though seeing world-class dancing in a dance contest is somehow a bad thing.
George is topping the odds to win this years competition (Picture: Guy Levy/BBC/PA Wire)
Had neither set foot on a stage before Strictly, I have no doubt they’d be the favourites to win.
Without them, this series of Strictly could quite easily have fallen flat and been rather unexceptional . It’s remarkable that they were both only drafted in from the reserve bench after Game of Thrones star Kristian Nairn and another Love Island winner, Dani Dyer, had to withdraw with injuries.
The public and their critics need to get over celebrities with dance experience appearing on Strictly: without them, it would be nothing more than a local talent show.
Comment now Which couple are you rooting for in Strictly Come Dancing? Share your thoughts belowComment NowOf course, there have been great dancers on Strictly without any dance or theatre background; 2020 winner, Bill Bailey was phenomenal, not to mention the oldest victor to date, and last year’s winner Chris McCausland was one of the most memorable champions of all time.
But there’s no one in this current series who has shocked everyone by producing jaw-dropping routines each week without ever having had a dance lesson in their lives – so thank God we have some of the best talent there’s ever been on Strictly to keep the excitement alive.
No celebrity this year has pulled off Bill Bailey’s dance talent, without prior dance experience (Picture: PA)
Although I have a suspicion Dani Dyer was going to be a surprising talent – I had even picked her as my front-runner before she was injured. Touch wood that she can return next year and prove me right.
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I’m absolutely devastated La Voix won’t be competing this week, when it feels like this was the moment she was born for.
Hopefully she’ll still be on the sidelines making her sharp quips and hysterical digs at Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, who will both be presenting their final Blackpool episode.
But even without the drag queen, this could be the most exciting Blackpool spectacular to date – thanks to Lewis and Amber’s fab-u-lous talents.
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Instead of rolling their eyes at Lewis and Amber’s astonishing talent, Strictly viewers need to keep them both in the contest for as long as possible. Otherwise, they’ll quickly find they miss them – a lot.
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