There are still three weeks left of Strictly Come Dancing 2021 but judge Craig Revel Horwood is already looking ahead to next year’s series. And he’s got a novel idea for Strictly 2022—he wants to have five judges on the panel!
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Strictly 2022 panel
This year’s series of Strictlysaw former pro Anton du Beke step in for Bruno Tonioli, who was unable to travel to the UK for the show this year due to a clash with the US’s Dancing With The Stars. Usually, Bruno travels back and forth between the US and UK to appear on both shows, but that wasn’t possible this year due to Covid restrictions.
And while Craig is keen to have Bruno back, he also doesn’t want to lose Anton. Speaking to MailOnline this week, he said:
Bruno adds something Anton can't and vice-versa, if you look at it that way, so I think they've both got different opinions which I think is perfectly good. We could easily have five people on that panel. I think our time would be limited because there are only two minutes for the judges to talk but we would make it count.
How many judges on the Strictly panel?
Since the first series of Strictly way back in 2004, there have always been four judges on the panel. The only exception to this was last year’s series, which saw the panel reduced to three—Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Shirley Ballas—as Bruno Tonioli appeared only as a guest judge via video link.
Adding a fifth judge next year would be a major shake-up, but it could be good! One major impact it would have would be removing the power of head judge Shirley Ballas to have the casting vote in the dance-off as with an odd number of judges their votes would never be tied.
