Ewe cannot be serious: in defence of Flockstars, ITV's sheepdog showdown

The celebrity shepherding contest has attracted baa humbugs from critics, but they’ve missed the point: it’s comfort TV that doesn’t outstay its welcome

Come by: Flockstars shepherd mentor Emma Gray with sheepdogs (l-r) Skye, Hoggy and Gyp. Photograph: Publicity image

Right out of the gate, Flockstars was on the back hoof. On paper, ITV’s brazen attempt to co-opt the classic One Man and his Dog by remaking it with a gaggle of second-string celebrities in Hunter wellies seemed both disrespectful and a little desperate. Executives had somehow signed off on an entire eight-week run predicated on what should probably just have been a single Ant v Dec round on Saturday Night Takeaway. The final product, which awkwardly combines the presentational razzmatazz of a shiny-floor ITV gameshow with the rather more muddy, mulchy reality of a giant echoey showground containing live animals, seemed a little too sincere to be enjoyably silly, and rather too arbitrary to be genuinely exciting.


The reviews of last month’s first episode formed an exceptionally loud chorus of baa humbug, branding the format “garish”, “silly” and “embarrassing”. On Twitter, the real-time reaction was similarly dismissive and often actively appalled, as if watching Brendan Cole coax a quartet of jet-black Hebridean sheep round a peacock-shaped hedge was some atrocious new low in livestock/celebrity-related content. That, of course, would be to conveniently forget the bottom-of-the-barrel pork scratching of Channel 5’s The Farm.

Flockstars trailer

The powerful spectre of Monkey Tennis was also repeatedly invoked, adding yet more credibility to the theory that a shadowy cabal of TV commissioners has secretly formed a Templar-like
brotherhood sworn to ensure every one of Alan Partridge’s panicked TV pitches comes to pass. In a world where we can watch Tony Blackburn ineffectually yelling “Come by!” on primetime ITV, perhaps it’s no surprise that Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank has become thrillingly, terrifyingly real.
If Flockstars has become a sheepdog trial in the court of public opinion, the audience has apparently rendered its verdict. Despite cute dogs, a couple of hunky shepherd mentors and Gabby Logan gamely shouting “Release the sheep!” while dressed like she’s about to set the straw-covered floor ablaze at a rooting-tooting line dance, Flockstars has receded from an opening high of 2.5m viewers down to a rather more threadbare 1.5m at the halfway point.

But here’s the thing: Flockstars isn’t actually a terrible idea. There’s a substantial core audience of 6m viewers who tune in to Countryfile every Sunday, making the pastoral magazine programme a consistent ratings heavyweight since going peak-time in 2009.

Why shouldn’t ITV try and go after some of those eyeballs? To that end, the sheepdogs consciously get as much of a spotlight as their human partners, so even if you’re unmoved by the prospect of seeing Wendi Peters from Corrie attempt to drive four stubborn Leicesters over a replica stone bridge, you might still be impressed by the fluid, watchful movements of her plucky partner Bill.
Some of the celebrities have even risen to the challenge.

 Richard Rawson – aka Fazer, the third wheel in N-Dubz – has cheerfully and unexpectedly thrown himself into his Flockstars role, rocking a natty tweed suit and waistcoat that makes him look every inch the country gent. Crafty old fox Lesley Joseph instinctively understood that what viewers really wanted to see was how Dorien from Birds of a Feather might flounder in the countryside, so she tottered haughtily through basic training and dolled up her faithful herder Gyp with a leopardskin kerchief.

Admittedly, the past four weeks could be criticised for being repetitive, as the original pool of eight contestants has been whittled down to four through a series of solo showcase rounds. But I’ve begun to find the visual sweeps and rhythms of watching livestock get hustled round a large paddock strangely soothing. It helps that the anxious calls of “lie down!” and “away!” are accompanied by the comforting tones of Jim Rosenthal, bringing his commentating A-game to what is really a pretty self-explanatory spectacle.

 And, crucially, it’s all over in a tight half-hour. There are no viewer votes, no training in real-time, no artificial expansion of the core concept to fill up acres of airtime. It’s just one also-ran and their dog, and that deserves some respect.

Things are about get a little more intense with the start of the semi-finals tonight. For one thing, the celebs will compete in parallel, racing against each other rather than the clock. There’s also an escalation in terms of livestock, swapping out placid, biddable Hebrideans and Suffolks for geese, those wilful, long-necked, firebrand non-conformists of the farmyard. Will any of this faze Fazer? Can Kelle Bryan from Eternal go all the way? For those about to flock, I salute you.