Interview medley not best choice for Styles
Don’t blame Harry Styles if the hour-long special “Harry Styles at the BBC” doesn’t begin to do him justice. Airing on BBC America on Friday, April 20, the show has enough Styles to satisfy the One Direction singer’s legions of fans, but there are plenty of times you want to say, “Shut up and let him sing.”
That comment would be directed at host Nick Grimshaw, no doubt a likable enough chap, but he’s programmed to toss so many pointless questions during the show’s too frequent interview sections, you’d think he was writing for a fan magazine.
The format isn’t ideal for either a concert performance (filmed in Manchester) or an interview because it mixes both. Dressed in one of his trademark floral-patterned suits, Styles opens the show with the song “Sweet Creature,” standing in the part of the set that looks for all the world like a giant Discman or Harry on the Half Shell. Then he ambles across a short walkway to take a seat opposite Grimshaw, who immediately corners him with a really tough question about what it’s like to hear yourself singing over the sound system in a supermarket.
Grimshaw and Styles are shown earlier in the day tooling around Manchester. They stop at a fish and chips shop, and we learn Styles is down with salt on his chips, but hold the vinegar. Then they go off to throw axes at targets — like darts, except with blades. Actually, they are more hatchets than axes, but Styles proves an able axman.
The star is game for it all and is more relaxed in the taped segments of the special. Oddly, though he must have been recognized by anyone with two eyes (not to mention ears), he never gets mobbed when he and Grimshaw are wandering around Manchester. The couple behind the counter at the fish and chips place simply serve him cheerfully while diners in the background pay no attention.
Styles and Grimshaw also visit a senior citizens home whose residents don’t entirely seem to know who Styles is, but one of the residents does allow that Styles is “rather dishy.”
What else would a superstar do at a senior citizens home but call out the numbers for a bingo game? Styles is a good sport and clearly having fun, attempting cheeky rhymes as he calls out “Forty-Four, droopy drawers.”
The best parts of the special are, of course, Styles performing. He is the real deal — perhaps more the United Kingdom’s Justin Timberlake than the actual U.S. Justin Timberlake here. He does nice versions of the songs on his exquisite solo debut, “Harry Styles,” including “We’re Not Who We Used to Be,” “Carolina,” “Woman” and, as the inevitable show-closer, the sublime “Sign of the Times.” His cover of Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush” clicks better than his cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.”
The show isn’t as satisfying as seeing Styles perform live, and Grimshaw may not add much to the party, but it is, after all, Harry Styles — and that makes the hour deserving of being called a special.