If awards were announced in the Czech Republic for the worst hosting performance, most people in the industry would be completely calm after Saturday’s Angels. The couple Honza Dědek and Ivana Kulhánková, who presented the prestigious gala evening, would triumph supremely. Although they tried to be funny, their humor absolutely missed the mark and all the other groups around it, except maybe the masochists. They can consider their greatest “success” to be that they did the unprecedented: that the audience present in the hall practically did not laugh during the nearly two-hour broadcast.
Do you know that Saturday morning when you are woken up with a severe hangover by the phone ringing for the fiftieth time, you pick it up and suddenly learn that you are hosting one of the most watched broadcasts in the country, namely Ceny Anděl? You, still under the influence of alcoholic delirium, will nod at anything, just to be left to drool on the pillow for a while longer, and a few hours later you are eating a plate of ibalgins for breakfast and reading the manual “How to become Mark Eben easily and quickly”. Don’t you know that? I would almost say that Honza Dědek and Ivana Kulhánková very well.
Dědek and Kulhánková also surpassed Bartoš
In reality, of course, it wasn’t like that, both presenters had given the nod to the presentation of the Angel Awards many months ago, so they had more than enough time to prepare. And although this is of course a prestigious event, at least for the experienced Dędek, a former music critic by the way, who has his own talk show, and often a funny one, it should be left behind. Nor is Kulhánková a newcomer to the industry, given that she hosts Óčka and Europe 2, and also entertains with comic videos on Instagram. In theory, it should therefore be able to reach the target. Theoretical…
But as it turned out, the theory is more of a utopia and what we could watch on the TV screens was a sheer mix of despair, embarrassment and a total miss. At the same time, the bar was damn low after last year, which was successfully taken care of by the otherwise good Kryštof Bartoš, who, however, was crushed by the weight of the premiere in the role of moderator at a similarly large event. And while the star of the Nineties amused the full hall at least with his embarrassment stemming from stage fright and nervousness, in the case of Dědek and Kulhánková, practically no one laughed throughout the evening.
Awkward jokes and even more awkward silence
The guests present and the spectators behind the TV screens were more than anything else taken by sheer terror and for the feeling of embarrassment they wanted to bury themselves at best, or at worst to shoot toluene in their veins. After all, judge for yourself by what the duo showed when they tried to introduce a new category – the joint project. And yes, they were really trying to find an appropriate expression.
“We should have said that together, because this category is built on equal cooperation, something between us, you understand,” replied the would-be offended Dědek. “Good, and do you have the feeling that we are doing some kind of equal collaboration? I think it’s more like… It’s called featuring, feat, like you are…” Kulhánková answered him. “Please?” Grandpa didn’t seem to understand. “Well, it’s like you’re going to say something here and there,” the presenter continued. “I feel better now,” concluded the former music journalist. Badum tss. There was an agonizing silence in the hall, and I could have sworn that somewhere in the background I could hear someone strangling himself on a hastily fashioned noose from a tie.
The director totally resigned
The whole performance of Dędek and Kulhánková actually seemed as if they sat in a pub until the day before the broadcast and thought hard about how to interest the overwhelmingly young audience from generation Z, but somehow they forgot about it under the fifth beer and finally resignedly said to themselves “we can’t be worse than Bartoš”. Wow, it really works.
The downright stupid thing about all of this is that somewhere in the background there must have been some responsible person, specifically the director, who heard it willy-nilly during the rehearsals. The fact that Dědka and Kulhánková were nodding to their party indicates either that everything was completely free for him, or that he was totally under steam. And I pray it’s the latter case, because the former is a little more excusable.
The nightingales are elsewhere as presenters
We can then laugh at the Nightingales as much as we want, that it’s a popularity poll, that Richard Krajčo is running around as Cinderella in slippers, and that from time to time domestic stars during the broadcast can’t handle honest and completely truthful criticism of a masked gentleman, but on the other hand, at least it has a little grades. Clearly, Ondrej Sokol s Aleš Hamarespectively the year before with Teresa Pergnerová there are none Monty Pythonbut at least he’s not afraid to aim at the chamber sometimes and entertain with a really good joke here and there. Although it is worth adding that they have a slightly different service after all, and the duo from Anděl apparently prepared the whole thing themselves.
The question then arises, why did the Angels become such a fiasco. For example, Czech Television doesn’t want Sokol and Háma, maybe the funny presenters are expensive, maybe he just wants to go his own way. All right. But I’m kind of afraid that after the successful experiment with Mikýř, she decided to follow the hypercorrect era, she’s afraid of some of the harsher jokes and accordingly hires or dictates to moderators what’s okay and what’s not. But this, at an event that also honors sharp creators such as MC Gey or JAR, seems like a punch in the eye and a shot in the foot.