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It’s a rainy afternoon in Liverpool and Alison Hammond is describing her latest TV series while standing outside a branch of NatWest. “We’re inviting extraordinary people to sing the one song that means the most to them and tells their incredible story,” she shouts, blinking at us through her transparent umbrella. “Travelling across Britain, the Your Song stage will showcase amazing songs sung by remarkable people.” Is there a prize attached to this cavalcade? There is. Those deemed sufficiently extraordinary, incredible, amazing or remarkable by the judges Paloma Faith and “Eurovision legend Sam Ryder” will win the chance to perform at an abstract “once in a lifetime concert” to be held “London’s iconic Hackney Empire”.

A montage of coming attractions does little to avert the mounting sense of unease: Paloma Faith weeping as she embraces a singer in a waterproof poncho; a man shouting “I’m 90 years old!” at the wrong camera; Hammond laughing into a succession of pensioners’ faces while swaddled in a cow-patterned coat. Here, clearly, is a show prepared to meet the very specific demands of the Sunday evening schedules. Sunday evening is, after all, sacrosanct. It is the land of Esther Rantzen and Harry Secombe: any singing show that nudges its slipper into such hallowed pastures must be prepared to turn up the thermostat and dial down the thinking accordingly. And Your Song does that – to a level that could reasonably be described as nightmarish.

And yet it seems unsatisfied with this: it wants more. What this “more” might consist of, however, is never entirely clear. Anyway, shhh, because here comes 17-year-old Elliot, whose “story” is that he loves his adoptive mum. The teenager wants to sing Fall on Me by Andrea and Matteo Bocelli because “it says everything that I’d want to say to her”. This seems a peculiar thing to declare, given that the exuberantly bearded Elliot is evidently more than capable of expressing his feelings for his mother without recourse to generic Euro-balladry. But second-hand emotions are very much Your Song’s bag, and so Elliot clambers on to the temporary stage – which has, touchingly, been erected in the shadow of an unusually large branch of NatWest – and proceeds to sing. We immediately cut to Faith and Ryder, who are watching the proceedings from a nearby hotel. “Classy vocal,” says Ryder. “A real chest voice.”

We will have to take his word for it because, as with Channel 4’s The Piano (both series were made by the same production company), Your Song seems determined not to let us hear more than a few seconds of any of its performances. Instead, they’re interspersed with comments from the judges (“I want to give him a hug!”), pre-performance interviews with contestants (“… pillar of strength …”), and shots of Hammond dancing with said contestant’s sobbing relatives.

The backstories continue apace. One contestant grew up on a council estate. Another had a kidney transplant. Ollie doesn’t seem to have a story but does have a man bun and a self-penned song about the importance of “having a laugh”.

For all its celebratory amateurishness, its air of shopping-precinct karaoke, there is a question mark at the heart of Your Song, a prolonged “um …?” that afflicts every aspect of this wellspring of shoestring sentimentality. The question being: what exactly is this cack? Nobody seems to know. The selection process is opaque. How important is a contestant’s backstory? Does it trump raw talent? “We’re looking for someone who’s got a strong story and has the ability vocally to connect their story with their performance,” says Faith, in the manner of one who has rehearsed this line many, many times yet remains bewildered by its fundamental bollocksness. “Smashing it,” agrees Ryder uneasily. “100%”. A well-meaning mass of teeth and hair, Ryder spends the first episode vacillating between tentative excitement and shuffling sheepishness, like a wookiee that’s been told off for guffing in pilates.

Like The Piano, Your Song is playing all the right talent-show notes, but not necessarily in the right order. Only the rain remains a constant.

At one point, apropos nothing, we cut to Faith and Ryder peering blankly through their hotel window at the events below, like the ghosts of Edwardian siblings cursed for ever to watch Alison Hammond high-fiving a passing hen party.

“I actually feel like screaming,” gasps Elliot, overcome with emotion after his performance. You and me both, pal.

• Your Song is on Channel 4