From the sun-drenched shores of Sydney to the glitzy television studios of the ICC, the Australian Dancing with the Stars makes its triumphant return like an estranged relative who shows up unannounced at the annual Christmas dinner, armed with a WhatsApp group update and a badly photoshopped new passport photo. Forsooth! The comeback kid known as Dancing with the Stars: All Stars is here, ready to sprinkle its sequin-studded, toe-pointed nostalgia all over your living room. It was in the twilight of the seventeenth season when we bid adieu to this ballroom behemoth, heaving a sigh of relief as if uncorking a bottle of long-stored and well-fermented Merlot. Network 10 officially unceremoniously dropped the curtain on the weekly dance-off daring us to dare a future bereft of tripping the light fantastic. On-pack tread? More like off-stage dread. Yet like the restless spirit of a Victorian playwright, Seven, risen from the ashes of disappointment, emerged to announce a Lazarus-style comeback. Further spinning the disco ball of confusion, the Eighteenth season opted for a pre-recorded format, cast aside live airings like yesterday's choreography and served us daily doses of reheated screen time. Ah, the scent of rehashed glitter and manufactured excitement – it's like they never left. Then come the hosts, returned from the abyss of Channel Seven's version of sunken cost fallacy, the dynamic duo of Daryl Somers and Sonia Kruger. Whisked out of the storage box of television history, dusted and polished for presentation like the finest silverware from your Nan's cupboard. Replacing the dynamic Denyer and delightful Keller, the two, undoubtedly well-meaning hosts, demonstrate a particular brand of tangoed nostalgia, dancing to the tune of a decade-old jingle. Of course, it wouldn't be a sad soiree without a judicious assembly of judgmental stars to serve as our arbiters. Enter the original judges, like Carole Baskin to a Tiger King party, Todd McKenney, Paul Mercurio, Helen Richey, and Mark Wilson. Replacing the exalted trio of Sharna Burgess, Craig Revel Horwood, and Tristan MacManus on the panel almost feels like a form of ancestral worship, where tradition is given precedence over evolution – an irrelevant flight of self-indulgence, perhaps. The resuscitation of the Australian Dancing with the Stars exemplifies the nostalgic craving of media moguls who mine emotive memories of yesteryears to satisfy the relentless beast of viewership ratings. This sad soiree of star-spangled sequins, set to the offensive cadence of redundant reruns, hangs heavy on the Australian dance scene – a common cha-cha-cha in a world constantly craving the warm, fuzzy embrace of familiarity. And so we must endure, trapped in the Tangoed embrace of this fading star of reality television, mourning the potential innovation offered by future, entirely dismissed by the blinding romance of Network Seven's heady tango with nostalgia. Ladies and gentlemen, refasten your seatbelts, the dance macabre, echoing from the hallowed halls of the past, has begun again. Will it be worth it? Only the mirror ball knows for sure.