It's Showtime For Labour's Leadership Contenders

Momentarily lost in thought, Liz Kendall grabs the back of her office chair and suddenly is frantically writing a letter. "Dear Supporter…"

The corporate setting for her promotional film makes it look like she’s about the write: "… have you been injured in an accident that wasn't your fault?" But she doesn't.

She wants people to vote for her in the upcoming leadership election. Why? Because "what really matters is another election - the one we will fight together in 2020".

No sooner have I finished this video - another one arrives in my inbox.

This time it is Andy Burnham surrounded by children at the kitchen table while his mum says: "He’s always given us a laugh, hasn’t he? Driven us mad, but given us a laugh."

Is it a pre-shoot video ahead of Burnham appearing on stage in ITV’s Britain's Got Talent? In a minute he’ll be back stage with Ant and Dec expressing nerves over whether the audience will get his odd sense humour.

But no. Guess what? Burnham wants votes too.

It’s easy to mock the political video and there were plenty of cynical remarks in the newsroom about skin crawling schmaltz and buckets of sick. Oddly, I quite liked the films.

This revelation was received with shock by some of my colleagues and when I told them I also used to listen to Phil Collins there was a sage nodding of heads.

Burnham’s, in particular, is well made. The shadow health secretary steers clear of his role within the top ranks of the party and focuses on family life and his constituency work. It's a smart move considering his apparent main rival Jeremy Corbyn is making hay as a backbench constituency campaigner.

A constituent tells how Burnham helped her get her daughter back after she had been kidnapped and taken to Libya.

Margaret Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, talks though an event where Burnham was heckled by Liverpool fans in 2009 while speaking on behalf of the Government at the 20th annual Hillsborough memorial service, but five years later he returns to Anfield stadium and appears to have gained the crowd’s approval.

In the family setting, it's always hard to know how contrived some of the conversations are. But Burnham and his family certainly seem more natural than Ed Miliband ever managed. The moment where Burnham’s wife, Marie-France, suggests he’d told her he wanted to be an MP on their first date seems to genuinely take Burnham by surprise - indeed the photograph of him as a long-haired university student suggests he wanted to be Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Everyone in the film suggests he is an ordinary man you can trust, and there are a fair number of endorsements from real people in the film.

It is rather unfortunate for Kendall then that comparisons will be made of her sitting alone in her office - appealing for support.

She’s sitting down, then standing up. She switches from writing on paper - to tapping out the letter on her computer.

"I wasn’t borne in to the Labour party I chose it; just like we are going to have to persuade millions of voters to do in the next general election," she types.

If you want a simpler message and a much shorter video, Kendall is the winner.

But can her letter-video persuade Labour voters that she is the only viable candidate for Labour to win the next general election?

There's a hint of anxiety to the video, as Kendall paces the office, but still a sense of Kendall's of unswerving defiance in the face of disappointing polls.

You are unlikely to find Yvette Cooper making a family video and it will be interesting to see if she responds in her own style.

We are of course now left holding our breath for Jeremy Corbyn, the movie. One box office suggestion is he could do it on his allotment. The chances are he won’t be tempted. Right now his campaign seems to be working without it.