page_title: Britain's Got Talent (series 4)
section_title: Series overview
hierarchical_section_title: Britain's Got Talent (series 4) / Series overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Louis Walsh from X Factor at Manchester Radisson Hotel.
context_page_description: The fourth series of Britain's Got Talent, a British talent competition series, began broadcasting in the UK during 2010, from 17 April to 5 June on ITV; due to live coverage of the 2010 UEFA Champions League Final on 22 May, the sixth audition episode of the series was pushed back a day to avoid clashing with it. Production on the fourth series during the filmed auditions required Louis Walsh to step in as a guest judge, after Simon Cowell became ill and unable to partake in certain sessions.
  The fourth series was won by gymnastic troupe Spelbound, with dance duo Twist and Pulse finishing in second place, and drummer Kieran Gaffney placing third. During its broadcast, the series averaged around 11 million viewers. Episodes of the live rounds were the first in the programme's history to feature guest performers within Results episodes, and were also the first to be broadcast in high definition; both the audition episodes and its sister show, Britain's Got More Talent, remained in standard definition until the following year.
context_section_description: Following open auditions held the previous year, the Judges' auditions took place across January and February 2010, within Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, London and Cardiff. They also took place within Newcastle upon Tyne, after they were cancelled at the last minute during production of the previous series. The Birmingham auditions were most notable in this series, due to the fact that because Cowell fell ill before he could attend them, marking the first time in the show's history he was unable to attend auditions, Louis Walsh replaced him as a guest judge for these until he had recovered. One significant change made to the programme in this series was towards the scheduling of semi-finals. Both the production staff and the broadcaster decided for the live semi-finals to follow a similar format incorporated in the live final - each set of semi-final performances were held in one episode, followed by a break to allow ITV to air another programme or a news programme, so as to give time for the public vote to be counted. The results would then be aired after this break, in a live results episode, much like the live finals had done in the past three series.
  Of the participants that took part, only forty made it past this stage and into the five live semi-finals, with eight appearing in each one, and ten of these acts making it into the live final. The following below lists the results of each participant's overall performance in this series:
   Winner |  Runner-up |  Third place
   Finalist |  Semi-finalist
  Ages denoted in this column pertain to those of the respective participant(s) for their final performance for this series.
  No precise locations were disclosed for The Chippendoubles - both as a group or for each respective member - during their time on the programme.
  The latter value is the age of the dog, as disclosed by its owner.
caption: Walsh was a guest judge in place of Cowell, while he recovered from an illness.
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