There’s a blood-curdling end to Dancing with the Stars’ Fright Night (RTÉ One, 6.30pm) for Anne Cassin, who becomes the first celebrity this year to be eliminated by dance-off. The Nationwide presenter departs the contest, along with her pro partner Robert Rowiński, after a head-to-head against Olympic rower Philip Doyle and Daniela Roze.
Sadly, there aren’t many jump scares in the climactic showdown. Doyle has been a frontrunner throughout the competition and it is unthinkable that the judges would give him the heave-ho over Cassin, who receives the lowest score of the night.
Still, if Fright Night lacks thrills and spills, at least Cassin departs on an upbeat note. “Amazing, a really, really good time,” she says of her time on DWTS. She allows that going this far into the contest required “lots of hard work” – but she has no regrets. “I absolutely enjoyed every single minute.”
Cassin takes her bows not with a whimper but with a purr, having donned a leopardskin for her jive to Zara Larsson’s Can’t Tame Her. But this leopard puts in a spotty performance, and the panel doesn’t hold back. “A cheetah ready to pounce,” says Oti Mabuse, before adding that Cassin “needed a little more energy”. A score of 14 roots her to the bottom of the leaderboard and makes her exit feel inevitable.
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First on the night are influencer and DJ Eric Roberts and Arianna Favaro, who dress up as creepy marionettes for a Charleston that is an exercise in puppetry perfection – and earns a stonking score of 39. “I think I’m crying ... Stop the lights, that was amazing,” says Mabuse. “Whoa, wasn’t that just perfection?” agrees Karen Byrne.
If the evening lacks surprises, there are a few screams – largely emanating from presenters Jennifer Zamparelli and Laura Fox, who try to scare each other by yelping without warning (perhaps they caught sight of the ghost of RTÉ past/future, Ryan Tubridy, backstage).
The big story of this scary, scary night, however, is of struggling performers at last coming good. Eurovision winner Niamh Kavanagh and Stephen Vincent receive their highest-ever score of 31, and Traitors star Paudie Moloney, dancing with Laura Nolan, turns caped crusader when he performs a paso doble soundtracked by the theme from the backstabbing reality show that made him famous.
It’s the full Paudie experience. At one point, he’s even down on his knees – Nolan reveals that he wanted to create history as the oldest DWTS contestant to execute a knee-walk. It’s terrifyingly entertaining – and a much-needed feelgood moment in an episode that features lots of chills but falls down when it comes to thrills.
