Euro-bysmal

The Eurovision Song Contest.

Yeah.

So, I guess we’ll start with the good. It was a pretty good show last night, with some fun songs and some…fun-to-hate. As usual, the hosts and, in particular, the green room presenters, were strange and slightly irritating. As usual, Terry Wogan was priceless in the commentator’s chair. What an absolute legend. (I won’t comment on the frankly brilliant suggestion of Wogan as the Eleventh Doctor…)

There were songs I genuinely liked; Iceland, for example, were catchy and exciting while being bland enough to appeal to everyone – at least, so I thought when I foolishly predicted them to win. I really, really should have known better. I blame it on alcohol. I also enjoyed the Armenian entry, which did rather better. I thought it was much more fun than the one-woman Ruslana rip-off that was Ani Lorak’s Ukrainian runner-up (the woman couldn’t really sing, but she didn’t need to, looking like she did), but fourth was a more than respectable finish.

And believe it or not, after having avoided it in the build-up to the final, I actually really enjoyed Andy Abraham’s UK entry. Wogan was right when he said it was our best in years, and I think the fact that it tied with the terrible Polish and German entries proves that the contest is almost entirely decided on politics rather than the music, which is a terrible shame. I was surprised when I heard Wogan suggest that there might be a Western breakaway in a not-too-distant future, but thinking about it it seems more and more accurate a prediction. I’d have mixed feelings about it – it’d be a real shame not to have all of Europe participating – but at least it might be fairer.

Speaking of predictions, I did rather better on others. Though I had quite enjoyed it myself, I guessed that the quirky French entry from Sebastien Tellier might find itself with the dreaded nul points, and though I wasn’t spot on, I took its relative failure as a minor success for me.  I was delighted to be vindicated in my assertion that highly-fancied Charlotte Perrelli (who, in the grey light at the start of her set, looks exactly like the life-sucking Wraith from Stargate Atlantis) bombed completely.

A mention has to go to Azerbaijan, whose painfully shrieking devil-and-angels mess was by far the worst song on the night and one of the worst in Eurovision for a long time, and yet somehow managed to garner over 100 points. Astonishing! (in a bad way.)

Finally, the top 3. It should have been obvious that Russia would win. Their song was pretty poor but inoffensive, with a handsome singer and famous skater (who knew Jurgen Klinnsmann could dance on ice?) to promote it. And, of course, the Eastern bloc got down on its knees and worshipped the fatherland like crazy. It was a crap winner, but at least it wasn’t Greece. Good god! How did that girl manage third, keeping pace with Russia for as long as she did? I nearly puked watching her performance, a tired, lazy cash-in on a mildly pretty (but out-of-place) singer, with utterly silly lyrics and an uncomfortably sweet tone. It was truly horrible, and I was actually mildly offended that it did as well as it did.

Eurovision, eh? I hate – hate - to love it.

BORIS JOHNSON?!?!?!?

BORIS JOHNSON?

…

BORIS JOHNSON?!?!?!?!?

Hello, City of London! You elected BORIS JOHNSON as your MAYOR?

It’s times like this that make me glad I’m an expat. If the English are resorting to voting based on how funny a politician’s tenure is going to be, then the country really is going to pot. For the love of Pete, the man’s a muppet! A buffoon who barely has enough wits to walk straight (which he doesn’t always manage anyway)!

I’m shocked. I’m truly shocked. If this is the standard of Conversative politicians that people are going to elect, I may have to kill myself when the mercy killing of Gordon Brown at the next general election comes to pass.

TV: America knows best

Truth be told, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the United States of America. Invasions of Middle-Eastern countries aside, they butchered the English language and maintain a general lack of awareness of the world they (mostly) control. (Incidentally, I don’t wish to stereotype all Americans in this bracket, there are a good deal of very aware and intelligent people over there – that’s the law of averages for you.) I tend to resent somewhat its influence.

However, it’s difficult not to develop a grudging respect for the total superiority of American television over that of the British. I think I would have a very hard time dealing with the (rather wide) shadow of the stars and stripes that encompasses the globe if it were not for the saving graces of (to name but a few) Lost, 24, House, Battlestar Galactica and so on and so on.

There just seems to be something about the American mentality that lends itself to making amazing TV. There may be a link between the fact that Americans tend to be more outgoing and less guarded than the stereotypical Englishman and the far more edgy nature of American TV. People take risks with ideas and hence we see shows like 24, which created an entirely new format for how a TV show could exist – the real-time hour-per-episode length that we take for granted with the show now that it’s had six seasons. I can’t see anyone in Britain having ever made a programme like that.

Of course, after things become great successes in the US, then the British market start making bad copies of it – witness Spooks, which can try all it want but it’s always going to be an inferior 24 without the time gimmick. On the other end of the genre scale, the frankly pathetic Mistresses that recently failed to set BBC One viewers alight is a painfully crap rehash of the superb Desperate Housewives. (Yes, I’m male, I watch Desperate Housewives. You try it, then try and laugh.)

Occasionally, American TV gets so good that it passes its own viewers by. Joss Whedon’s magnificent space western Firefly suffered this fate – it was critically acclaimed, rightly so, as one of the very best television series of recent years, but just couldn’t get the viewers to survive. As I mentioned not long ago, Jericho found itself in a similar situation (though I’m not about to claim that Jericho is anywhere near as awesome as Firefly).

The only thing that Britain has to pride itself upon is Doctor Who, which continues to fly the flag for family entertainment. The fourth season starts up again on Saturday 5th April and despite the thoroughly disappointing return of Catherine Tate as the new companion, it’s going to be a cracker. Torchwood’s second season has done much to make up for the horrendous first effort, but it needs to be this good consistently to earn its place next to its parent show as genuinely great British TV. Life on Mars was the only other really excellent production we’ve had recently, and even that is having its reputation eroded away somewhat by the lacklustre Ashes to Ashes spin-off.

This is a great time of year for the British viewer, but it’s barely anything to do with our own TV. Running alongside Doctor Who (and, frankly, probably outshining it) will be the fourth seasons of Lost, House, Battlestar Galactica and Desperate Housewives. Fantastically, all of the above are on different days of the week, so almost every day there is going to be some compelling telly to watch. And it’s all thanks to our friends across the Atlantic. God Bless America!

Backseat blogging

A lack of “news” material today (I hope you weren’t expecting me to cover the fact that gold is trading at $1000 an ounce for the first time ever) means I’ve got to think of something myself without being prompted by such trivialities as breaking stories.

I guess I could do a token piece on the US Presidential “race” (I wish they’d stop calling it that, even a marathon takes less than a day), but quite frankly I’m getting so bored of the whole thing. Why they all can’t decide internally on their candidates, or have all the states vote on the same day, or just fix it for Bush again, is beyond me. JUST END IT NOW, AMERICA!

So I won’t talk about that then. I should mention in passing that after I sent a general pressure email to my friends two days ago when I launched this blog, in which I politely guilt-tripped them all into reading, I received a reply from one of them who clearly fancies himself as a bit of a backseat blogger. (Not to sound ungrateful, particular reader, I appreciate your contributions. Keep them coming.) Anyway, this guy gave me a little list of things he thought I should talk about, and with a lack of material I have indeed turned to this list. First on it was the US Democrat nomination, which I have covered above as much as I feel I can without losing my will to live, so I might as well finish off the list.

It reads, in full: “The US democrat nomination, look at your favourite webcomics, websites, whatever, or do something on Eurovision. Or movies.”

So,

1. See above.

2. I am a regular reader of Questionable Content by Jeph Jaques, Ctrl-Alt-Del by Tim Buckley, and PvP Online by Scott Kurtz.

3. My go-to website when I have nothing to do is the BBC Sport page. I don’t visit as many websites as perhaps I should, there are a lot of geeky ones that I’m missing out on. Suggestions in the form of comments are very welcome indeed. I’m also a recreational user of Facebook (studies show it’s wise to refer to such things in drugs terminology) and I am contractually obliged to regularly visit MyFootballClub.co.uk, as through it I am a shareholder in Ebbsfleet United FC. More on that when The CDB Pod launches.

4. In retrospect, “whatever” probably wasn’t a specific suggestion, but I’ve come too far to turn back now.

5. Eurovision. Is it just me, or is that a really strange thing to come to after discussing Presidential elections and the web? Eh, anyway. I have a mixed relationship with Eurovision, probably because I watch British television. From a British perspective, Eurovision is horrible. These people really have got to decide whether they are taking it seriously or not. On one hand, Terry Wogan makes lots of noises about “we need a winning entry this year” or whatever, which is fair enough, he clearly cares about the whole thing, but then the BBC force him to present a choose-Britain’s-entry show in which an entire third of the voting ballot is made up of people who have histories of not winning public-vote TV singing contests IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, LET ALONE EUROPE? It’s really sad, because like any sensible Brit I like Terry Wogan immensely and I don’t think I can handle him getting hurt again.

I’m going to fall out of list format now because it’s become clear that I’m actually writing an entire article on Eurovision now, so that pesky reader has got his way. I hope you’re proud of yourself – this is what you’ve done to me.

Of course, I say that in a cynical, hurt sort of way, but the truth is I do actually really like Eurovision. I will always make sure I am free on the night of the contest so that I can watch it with my family, because it is a great television event, as long as you set yourself free of the despair and painfully inevitable doom that comes from believing the British are in with any chance at all. There is much entertainment to be had watching people who actually think the contest is important (i.e. any country east of Germany). Every year, you are guaranteed to find at least one song, usually a handful, that are either fantastic fun because they’re quirky or actually a really really good song. I still want to find a copy of the Serbia & Montenegro entry from 2002, I think it was, when Wogan was somehow surprised that everyone liked it. It was a great, mysterious traditional folk thing that crept up on you out of nowhere. They came third, and they deserved more, if not for that pesky Ukrainian girl wearing Xena-style leather and cracking a whip.

Back to my point on how Britain chooses its entry, one of the talent-show failures inevitably won, in this case pleasant-but-dull-as-dishwater X-Factor reject Andy Abraham, and I hope he enjoys his nul points. There’s no way in hell Europe will vote for him. I haven’t even heard the song – I couldn’t bear to watch the show – but I saw him a couple of times on X-Factor (my mother and sister were watching it. I couldn’t watch anything else, I swear) and he appears to have pigeonholed himself into the grandparents-approved superficial soul niche. Considering that in the last few years, whip-flailing Ukrainian “roleplayers”, Tim-Burton-meets-Slipknot death metal and a transsexual granny from, er, Ukraine again, have enjoyed huge success, I’m not sure instantly-forgettable soul is what Europe wants right now.

Which leads me on to this question – why do we ask the public, who, let’s not forget, constantly prove themselves to be morons, choose between a bunch of people we’ve either never heard of before or have previously decided via a similar process are not talented enough to make it? Granted, it isn’t the 70s anymore, but Cliff Bloody Richard (full name) entered the thing about a million times back in the day! Many countries do actually enter people who have actual careers in music, and they do pretty well in general. I remember a conversation I had with my mother a few years ago when, for some unfortunate reason, Emma Bunton (Baby Bloody Spice, also a full name) came on the telly with some godawful video for some godawful song. This was her comeback before last, I hasten to add – the song got into the top 10, not #67 which I believe was as far as her latest attempt got – when she was actually popular. And my mother asked me “why don’t we get Emma Bunton to do Eurovision?”, and I couldn’t find a suitable answer for it. That was the year we entered James Fox, to put it into context. (What? You don’t remember him? Surely not, he came fourth in Fame Academy!)

So next year, can we please ditch the public phone vote and have at most three people who are involved in the music business in some way, and let them enquire to some actual musicians as to whether they’d like a go at restoring British pride. Call me crazy, but this year Britain are going to get beaten by a puppeted turkey. We cannot let that happen again.

The emailer had other points in his list, but I’ve forgotten what they are.

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P.S. A quick plug for a fantastic Eurovision book, Nul Points by Tim Moore. This fellow took it upon himself to visit everyone who ever scored the famous zero points, and it makes for a great read. Do check it out.