The contestants have been whittled down, a massive studio has been built and presenters Reggie Yates and Holly Willoughby have spoken more than a sentence already — this means The Voice is now live.

Here at TV Talk we weren’t that impressed with the auditions stage as for a show about the voice we were hoping for some hideous looking people who were exceptionally talented. Instead it was just normal looking people, and in fact most have ordinary voices.

Once each coach had 10 people in their team, meaning there was a whooping 40 voices taking part, the show moved into a battle situation. Each team paired up people in their groups who they thought sounded most alike and made them battle for their part in the show with their voice. Essentially it was one weekend of shows to halve the number of contestants. It was a bit dull, and a bit shouty.

So coming through to the live shows there was still 20 contestants, and if they were to all perform in one evening that would take some serious commitment from everyone. Instead this weekend just saw Team Will and Team Tom take to the stage.

To find out who was eliminated this week click below.

Show spoiler »

One of the problems I have with the show, because there have been so many people on stage there are only a few people that I actually remember. It doesn’t help that because this show is about the voice (in case you had forgotten) they don’t have an emotional back story, or personality to remember them by. So each week I have to try and remember who they are, until they sing and I realise I don’t actually much like their voice and forget about them until they are on screen again.

The show starts with the coaches singing a U2 song together. They are all trying a bit too hard, sounds like they are all singing a different song, and Danny is still amazed as to why he is singing with Tom Jones.

The rest of the show alternates between contestants from Team Will and Team Tom. The first contestant up to perform is Joelle Moses who sang a Mary J Blige song, and was quite good. Team Tom’s first live offering was Sam Buttery, the larger, camp man with lovely coiffured hair. He sang ‘A Little Respect’ by Erasure, and it wasn’t that great to be honest. However, he was only criticised for was having backing dancers as they distracted from him.

Back to Team Will with Frances Wood. She has buff men on the stage whilst she sings, but this isn’t called a distraction. She also managed to tan herself so much she made herself look yellow. All these comments are distracting from the fact that I can’t remember what she sang, or what she sounded like.

Tom Jones’ next contestant is Adam Isaac who had been given a Foo Fighters song to sing, but is struggling with it. However, they show him in rehearsals picking up a guitar and this helped him to sing the song. When he performs the song live he is actually quite screechy, but according to the coaches this doesn’t matter because it is a rock song. He’s told to move around the stage more, but this is obviously dangerous as Adam fell off the stage earlier in attempt to do this.

There are already some clear favourites and this is the case for will.i.am’s next artist Jaz Ellington. Not only does he have quite a cool name, but he can also sing very nicely and it is with these skills he could go far in this competition.

The last batch of performers include Leanne Mitchell, who I don’t really remember except that she looked a bit like The Apprentice’s Karren Brady. At 17-years-old Sophie Griffin is the youngest in the competition, and seems to do no wrong as the judges all wish they were as talented as her when they were her age. Team Tom’s Matt and Sueleen are the only duo left in the competition. They are a couple and do that annoying thing of pretend hatred in the relationship. And Tyler James, the hipster version of Jedward, who knew Amy Winehouse.

And finally Ruth Brown who has an ability to belt out songs, even though she has never had proper singing lessons. She is sweet and the only one I really like, but each week they dress her up as if she is a toddler. But it is about the voice and her performance has left the judges in floods of tears.

The live show was fun, best stage of the show so far, but long. The BBC have taken the same approach to The Voice as they do with Strictly Come Dancing, Holly Willoughby presents most of it, like Bruce Forsyth, and then cuts to Reggie Yates backstage, like Tess Daly. Even announcing the results on Sundays as a prerecorded show, like they do with Strictly.

The thing is the show seems to think that voting is dirty, no big thing was made about the phone lines being open and voting time is only half an hour. The judges also seem to think that criticism is a bad thing, making it all nicey nice and means no one really learns anything.

Next week Team Jessie and Team Danny are performing, so we can cut down on more people before another change to the format of the show. In the meantime you can catch up with the series so far on iPlayer.