Artistic Differences. The third TV special. It was... great? No. Fantastic? No. The best program ever? NO WAY.

I'm a great fan of S Club 7 and their TV programs. I've seen 28 programs. With Artistic Differences that makes 29. And you know what? This program doesn't DESERVE to have S Club 7 in it. It doesn't deserve to have S Club 7 in it. It's not worthy of it. I cannot tell you enough how POOR and VERY BAD this program was.

Why was it so poor? I really don't know where to start, so let's make a list.

- Script: VERY POOR. The storyline was pathetic. One of the members of the group leaves. UMM HELLO??? Doesn't anyone remember Boyfriends and Birthdays??? You've done that damned storyline before! Basically, their car breaks down before they leave LA, and they need to raise some money to fix the car, so Brad gets a job in another boy band to raise some money. This causes an argument with Paul, so Brad leaves the band. Meanwhile, the rest of the group get jobs too. Oh and there's another little thing called Continuity, or more rather a total and complete lack of it. What's continuity? It's the process of having a storyline that travels through several episodes. Such as the fact they never have money. Or, it's a part of a story that crops up again and again, or an event that happens in an early episode and affects later episodes. Why's this important? Well if you've seen the last episode of LA7 you'll have seen the group leaving LA, just before their manager turns up with a record deal for them. Joanie knows about this record deal. In this TV special, the group go back to Joanie and she gets them a house on a cliff to stay in for a few days. Now, since she knows about the record deal, wouldn't she tell them? Noooo! It's not mentioned at all. Strange considering they need money. The script for this TV special is one of the poorest scripts I've ever seen for any TV series. Shoot the scriptwriters, please!

- Acting: Poor. This wasn't S Club 7's fault - anyone should be able to realise that an actor can only act with what they're given, and considering how poor the script was, you really can't blame SC7 for not doing a brilliant acting job. Of course, the poor quality of acting isn't entirely the fault of the script - it's also the directors fault too. But back to acting for a moment. The supporting actors and actresses were extremely poor again, and totally devoid of any acting ability whatsoever. There was Joanie who was probably the best (not saying much, is it?). Then the other members of the boyband that Bradley joined who were PATHETIC. The boyband manager (a right dork), the guy they hire to replace Bradley, Jed in the restaurant (idiot)... And then...

- Directing: Did the director just graduate or something? I'd imagine so. The director's the person who draws everything else (script, acting etc) together, and directs the actors. So in a way he's responsible for the poor acting too. This episode was directed exceptionally poorly. Fire him, please. Let him go and work on some third-rate BBC costume drama where no-one will care how crap he is.

- Camerawork and Special Effects: Eh? What am I on about? The cameraman (or men). They were terrible. Probably the fault of the director. Let me explain. An American cop TV series called NYPD Blue started a trend, and that trend is for camera's to be hand held, instead of on a steady camera rig, which results in a more natural slightly shakey camera image during filming. On NYPD Blue, this effect works exceptionally well. On an S Club 7 TV Special? IT DOESN'T WORK!!! It ruined the entire show! The camerawork was so terrible, I just can't put into words how bad it was. The camera was constantly shaking. The camera was constantly not in focus. Quite often when the camera moved between people it missed off parts of their faces and heads. The cameraman was also responsible for most of the special effects. What am I talking about? Well, you remember how in Miami 7 and LA 7 they had nice computer graphics plus a short burst of music to switch between scenes? In this TV special they didn't do that. They did something that worked soooo well (NOT). To switch between scenes - camera moved down, camera moved back up. Wow, that's so amazing, I don't know how they did it so well. Oh and the other amazing thing - the earthquake. The cameraman moved the camera a little bit more than usual. Wow. Oh and another point - this is rather small, but still important. The entire show was filmed on low, poor quality film. In the series, they filmed part of the episode "Making Movies", using a hand held camera, held by the group. Those cameras use slightly lower quality film - if they camera moves fast, you can see double images, ghosting, like there's a bad signal on the TV. The entire TV special was filmed on very poor quality film that constantly looked like this.

- Overall: Overall, I can safely say that this TV Special was easily one of the poorest pieces of television I have ever seen in my life. Damnit - it's even worse than FBi on BBC1! I sat down expecting to see a great new TV special, because let's face it - the past two, "Back to the 50s" and "Boyfriends and Birthdays" have been brilliant, haven't they? I sat down to watch this one, and was disgusted. I actually got up ten minutes before the end and didn't bother watching anymore. One of my friends, who's just as big a fan as me, she didn't even bother watching the second half. From start to finish this TV special was amateur, VERY amateur. The channel screening it, ITV, didn't have a clue either - during the advert, the titles said "S Club 7 - The Movie". If that truly had been the movie, I would never watch S Club 7 again. I don't know how they could stand acting that piece of crap!

Now, some of you may dismiss this review as being biased, and say that I don't really like S Club 7, or I would have loved the show. Think again. I love S Club 7. I love everything about them. Just because my website concentrates mainly on the Girls of S Club 7, doesn't mean that I only like the girls. I like the girls, sure. I also think the guys are ok too (very lucky also). I love the TV shows. I really like they're music and get really annoyed when they don't get to number 1. I like everything about S Club 7. Hell - I've made a website about them with over 4,000 pictures of them on. This site get's over a thousand hits a day. It's the largest S Club 7 site on the net by a VERY long distance. I spend a lot of time each week updating it, maintaining it and so on. This website has been linked in Smash Hits/Top of the Pops magazine (according ot people on my guestbook). I've had someone from the Sun newspaper and various other music websites email me about S Club 7. I don't take things lightly, and above all, if I'm biased towards S Club 7, I'm biased to liking them. But, I can safely say I did NOT like this TV "special". Oh, it was special alright.

To close, I shall say this. If I'd been given a week to write a script, then sent ot LA for a week or so with a camera and S Club 7, I could have produced a better TV Special than this. I seriously hope that the second LA TV special, to be filmed and screened later this year, is a whole lot better than this one was, otherwise they really are doomed to fail. They have enough criticism thrown at them already, without having to put up with comments about this show. What most people fail to realise is how good or bad the TV show is doesn't depend on S Club 7. On the credit listing for this TV special, there was a MASSIVE list of names. I've seen films made with smaller film crews! So how the hell did this turn out so bad???

If you're a really really devoted S Club 7 fan and you haven't already seen this TV special, then you're going to ignore all of the above and watch it anyway. Just be warned - if you've read this review, then you should be warned enough. You will be disappointed. Unless you're so diehard a fan that so long as they're on the TV you don't care. But, if you like quality, and a decent program, then you're going to be sorely disappointed. If you've seen it, and agree or disagree with any of the above, feel free to email me if you want to add a review of your own, or hop along to my Forum, where I've started a new thread about this TV special. Discuss it there, say whatever you want, because I'd love to know what everyone else thought of it. You don't need to register in the forum to post a message, just hop along there and say what you want, by clicking Here.