STRICTLY Come Dancing fans have accused the judges of giving one show favourite an ‘easy ride’ by ‘overmarking’ them.
Some viewers of the BBC One juggernaut believe Hamza Yassin is being given preferential treatment by the Shirley Ballas, Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Anton Du Beke.
Hamza and Jowita danced an Argentine Tango at the weekend
Motsi and Shirley gave Hamza a standing ovation
It comes after Hamza and his partner Jowita scored 37 points at the weekend for their Argentine Tango, with Motsi and Shirley giving them a perfect ten.
Anton also gave Hamza a nine, despite criticising his leg work and saying: “The bottom half looked like you played centre-forward for Bradford City.”
This led to fans believing the scoring was biased compared to some of the other stars still left in the competition, in particular Fleur East and Molly Rainford who both scored 35.
As viewers will know, Fleur also ended up in the dance off for a third time on Sunday.
One fan posted on a Strictly fan thread on reddit: “I do like Hamza and I think that the remaining contestants are all very good. In fact, I’m really happy with this season as I really like all of the remaining dancers – including Hamza.
They continued: “However, I think that Hamza has been getting preferential treatment. I even went back to re-watch his dance from this weekend and there is no way that Fleur and Molly should have been trashed as much as they were when Hamza only got some mild comments about his foot work.
“During a lot of his dance, he was basically standing around while Jowita did her thing. I would have scored him just below Fleur and Molly.”
Many agreed with this sentiment.
A second weighed in: “This week really had me scratching my head. Couldn’t understand what caused the judges to give that dance a 10. One of the rare times when I truly felt this wasn’t a strong dance for Hamza at all.”
A third added: “The judges put sooo much emphasis on Hamza’s partnering skills! There wasn’t much for him to do himself so it was unfair to give his dance very high marks when other celebs had a much greater challenge.”
And a fourth chipped in: “Hamza is one of my favourites but I agreed with Anton’s comments about his legs in that dance and thought it was overmarked.”
A fifth also said: “I definitely agree he got an easy ride this week. I’ve loved each of his dances in the past few weeks but this week really missed the mark and there were stronger couples.”
Not everyone was on the same page though.
“I sort of agree about last weekend, but I think that’s the only time it’s happened, so I don’t think it’s fair to say he has had an easy ride all season, imo,” pointed out another reddit user.
Another claimed the judges scores are not given Hamza an unfair advantage, pointing to the public vote.
They wrote: “At the end of the day, he’s clearly the most popular and an incredible dancer and the public decide who they want to see progress and who they want to see out.”
Hamza is now through to musicals week which will take place this Friday.
The World Cup has played havoc with the schedules, meaning the performance show is airing on December 2nd, while the results will air on Saturday December 3rd.
There is no show on Sunday night.
Hamza scored higher than Ellie Taylor and Fleur East, who were in the bottom two
