The Four-Paddle Gamble: Why Couple’s Choice Still Splits the Judges — and the 2026 Routine We’d Bet the Glitterball On

It is mid-November 2026, the Strictly ballroom is down to the business end, and somewhere in a rehearsal studio a celebrity is being asked to cry on cue while a choreographer waves a trainer at them. Couple’s Choice is back. Again. And once more, the category that was supposed to be the show’s emotional ace is threatening to become its most unpredictable scoring event.

A category with an identity crisis

Couple’s Choice arrived in 2018 with the best of intentions. The idea was simple: give couples a week off the foxtrot and let them tell a story. Three flavours were on offer — contemporary, street commercial and theatre jazz — and the promise was that we would see a different side of the celebrity. What the producers perhaps didn’t bank on was that the judges would then have to mark it.

That is where the trouble starts. A Couple’s Choice routine can be a tightly choreographed contemporary piece, a street commercial number full of swagger, or a theatre jazz routine with more jazz hands than a panto. The judges score them all on the same paddles. Craig Revel Horwood can’t very well hold up a 4 for a lack of heel leads in a routine that doesn’t have heel leads. Or can he? The result is a category where one couple can get a 40 for standing still in a spotlight looking misty-eyed, while another gets a 6 for actually dancing their socks off. Fans notice. Fans row about it on social media. And the leaderboard gets skewed in a way that can send a decent couple home.

The paddle problem

Here’s the thing about Couple’s Choice: it is judged like a dance, but it is written like a documentary. The VT before the routine does half the work. If the celebrity has lost a parent, battled an illness or simply had a nan who loved a bit of disco, we will hear about it. Sometimes that context is genuinely moving. Sometimes it feels like a producer has been sent out with a clipboard and a mandate to find the tears before the salsa.

The judges are not immune to the narrative. Motsi Mabuse will often reward the feeling of a routine, Shirley Ballas will praise the storytelling, Anton Du Beke will say something lovely about commitment, and Craig will mark the feet. In a normal week, that tension is the show’s engine. In Couple’s Choice week, it becomes a lottery. We have seen 10s handed out like confetti for routines that were more performance art than dance, and we have seen genuinely lovely pieces marked down because they lacked a proper finish. Neither is wrong, exactly. But both can feel deeply unfair when the scores feed into a public vote.

Heart, hokum and the trolley of props

At its best, Couple’s Choice is transcendent. Think Rose Ayling-Ellis and Giovanni Pernice’s silent moment in 2021 — simple, personal, devastating in the best way. It worked because it trusted the audience. There were no gimmicks, no overstuffed set, no trainer-based metaphor. Just two people dancing and a story that needed no explanation.

At its worst, the category tips into hokum. We have had tears, trainers, trolleys, and dedications to dead relatives and living dogs. The bar for meaningful has been raised so high that a couple doing a nice jazz routine to a Showaddywaddy track can feel like a palate cleanser. Audience fatigue is real. Fans want to be moved, but they also want to be entertained. When a couple walks into a rehearsal room and announces they are doing Couple’s Choice about their journey, you can almost hear the nation whispering: here we go.

That is the fine line. Genuine emotion lands. Manufactured emotion makes people reach for the kettle. The couples who succeed are the ones who let the story emerge from the dance, rather than draping a story over a dance that was never strong enough to carry it.

The 2026 gamble we’d take

If we were handing out the Couple’s Choice assignment this week, we would give it to the couple currently marooned in the middle of the table: a broadcaster in their fifties who has been consistently pleasant, occasionally funny, and never once in the bottom two. They have been paired with a first-year pro who is still finding their feet. They have a story — everyone does — but they have not used it yet.

No props. No trolley. No trainer-based metaphor. Just a clean, contemporary routine about why they started dancing, and a pro who choreographs to their strength rather than their tears. That is the 2026 routine that could win it. It is also the one most likely to get a 6 from Craig and a 10 from Motsi, which is exactly the problem.

The Ultimate Strictly verdict

Couple’s Choice is not going anywhere. It is too useful a narrative tool, too handy for a semi-final boost, and too ripe for a journey package. But the judges need to decide what they are marking: technique, storytelling or sheer nerve. Until they do, the category will keep splitting paddles and opinions in equal measure. And in 2026, that might just be the most Strictly thing of all.