Movie Pitch: Britain’s Got TERROR

With a nod to classic Vincent Price/Diana Rigg flick Theatre of Blood, this could take the cinemas by storm. Here’s the synopsis:

Kendall Lombard (Bill Nighy) has been practicing his novelty stage act for years – standing atop six stacked chairs while playing a mouth organ and juggling four live guinea pigs. After undergoing the regional heats process, he is chosen to appear on a top rated talent show, ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent. However, all does not go to plan on the big night, when one of his guinea pigs has stage fright and piddles down his sleeve, causing him to cock up the ending to a harmonica-based cover of Radiohead’s Paranoid Android. The judges, as one, pull their special ‘I know the camera is on me now’ disgusted faces, and proceed to give Lombard three Xs before he can regain his composure. A chuckling Ant and Dec drag a furious Lombard from the stage.

Subsequently, a disgraced Lombard vows bloody vengeance on the judges. Abetted by his daughter Mariella (Sheridan Smith), Lombard tracks down each of the judges and the hosts, with the aim of murdering them in a cruelly ironic (not to mention convoluted) fashion. First up, Simon Cowell (Richard Keys) is lured to an abandoned warehouse by Mariella on the premise that she’s a moderately talented but easily exploitable young singer. Knocked unconscious from behind, he awakes to find himself in a vat, where he is subsequently drowned in the salty tears of failed reality show contestants.

Secondly, Amanda Holden (Cheryl Cole) is lured to the opening of a new beauty salon (actually an abandoned warehouse). As Holden sits under a hair dryer, Lombard and Mariella stand around thinking of a suitably fitting demise for her. After twenty minutes they agree that she doesn’t really have any interesting or unique character traits, so they let her go.

Next up, Piers Morgan (a half chewed Toffo in a suit) is invited to a fake awards ceremony on the proviso he is to accept the award for Best Person In Britain. The deluded buffoon, unable to resist the chance to have his ego stroked, attends the ceremony, his perpetual quest for celebrity status blinding him to the fact it’s taking place in a deserted warehouse and that the rest of the audience are shop dummies. On accepting his award from a heavily disguised Lombard, a puff of knockout gas is released from the podium, and Morgan collapses to the floor. As he awakes, he discovers he is stuck in a metal tube of some kind. Disguise removed, Lombard explains how Morgan had been fired from his job as editor of the Daily Mirror after publishing faked photographs of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. As such, his fitting punishment is to be fired out of a cannon, into a mirror.

(An untalented) Artist’s impression.

Finally, Ant and Dec (Richard Hammond and Jon Culshaw) are locked in a room (of an abandoned warehouse) with a television set playing an endless loop of Newcastle United’s Season Review 2008/9 until they take their own lives.

And that’s it. It could do with a bit of fleshing out, admittedly (though going into too much detail about the grisly demise of well-known celebrities on the internet would probably see us in court), but with a good director behind it, we’re saying it’s a winner. Come on Working Title, what are you waiting for?

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New Shaun Micallef Programme!

There’s a new Shaun Micallef programme! There’s a new Shaun Micallef programme! Here’s a screen grab of him playing chess against a toaster from it!

Sadly however, it’s not a new Shaun Micallef P(r)ogram(me). Instead, it’s a new primetime panel-based game show, transmitted every Tuesday at 7.30pm on the Ten network (in Australia, as we’d hope you’d all know by now). It is called Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation.

The format runs thusly: three teams representing the three generations (Baby Boomers, Generation X, Gen Y) must answer a series of pop culture related questions, and undergo a series of culture-related tasks. Whichever generation has the most points by the end of the show is the best for a whole week.

We’d sooner a ‘proper’ comedy show, but hey, it’s a comedy panel show, and it’s hosted by Shaun Micallef. What’s not to like. Here comes our extensive review, using our time-honoured “good things get points, bad things see points deducted” system.

GOOD: It is hosted by Shaun Micallef. +5 points.

GOOD: Due to the pre-watershed timeslot, Shaun vows to “subtract points for filth”. This means Shaun gets to be all schoolmasterly when banter slides into smut, which is always a good chance for him to be amusing. +2 points.

GOOD: Some of the guests are people we recognise, like Arj Barker from Flight of the Conchords. +2 points.

BAD: Despite many of the panellists being comedians, much of the show is run along strict quiz-based lines. So, if someone buzzes in with an amusing but clearly wrong answer, Shaun has to quickly move on and ask someone else, instead of riffing with them on the likelihood of the Qantas logo being a farting dog (or whatever) in the ‘identify a corporate logo after seeing just a tiny bit of it’ round. –2 points

BAD: While it’s a nice idea for a round (especially as we’re graphic design sluts who can’t get enough of rounds based on corporate idents), Ofcom would surely frown on such things being shown over here without going into Pizel Frenzy mode. Not that there’s more than a 0.0005% chance of it getting shown in the UK anyway. –0.0005 points

GOOD: Even in the 7.30pm timeslot, Shaun still finds time to indulge in plenty of avant-garde tomfoolery. Such as: introducing an episode while playing chess against a toaster (see top image), and holding the clue cards at strange angles for the contestant at the easel in the “sketch the TV show’ round. +3 points

GOOD: Also, Shaun announces that while Ten aren’t offering any prizes, he’ll give one of his own awards to the winning team, such as the Aria received for his ‘Expurgated Micallef Tonight’ DVD ,or his prize for winning an edition of Thank God You’re Here. This is good, because it reminds us of the high esteem in which Micallef is held in his native country, and hopefully he’ll keep getting work. +3 points

HOWEVER: It also means that he’ll be kept too busy to try his luck on UK television, which is a crying shame. –2 points

MIND YOU: The bit where Shaun announces the final round is worth a ‘secret number of points’, then reels off a load of examples as to what that secret number could be (“it could be worth five points, could be worth five thousand points. It could be worth seventeen points. It could be worth three hundred and eleven points. It could be worth three hundred and twelve points”). To move on, an envelope is lowered down on a piece of titanium wire by some 'especially blinded monks', containing the number of points that the round is worth. REDEEMED. +2 points.

GOOD: The final round is a Generation Game (hey, that could be another name for the… oh, you’ve guessed) type affair, with the teams asked to do cross-generational tasks like wallpapering a room…

…or building sandcastles. This might be a bit generic, but it’s helped along by Shaun reading out some relevant ‘facts’ (“In England, by 1806, falsification of copyrighted wallpaper stamps was punishable by death”). Plus, the cackhanded jobs done by the teams also add to the fun, much as in The Generation Game When Jim Davidson Wasn’t Doing It. +2 points

GOOD: Harold Bishop! +3 points

GOOD: No credits at the end, just a message and a URL of where the credits can be found. This prevents annoying broadcasters from ‘credit squeezing’ and doing annoying voiceovers along the lines of “You like Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, so we’re assuming you’ll also like Horne & Corden”, so we are in favour of it. +1 point.

BAD: It’s a Granada show. By the final episode, this is likely to have become an ‘ITV Studios’ show, which isn’t as impressive. –2 points

GOOD: But then we think about how good Granada used to be, in the good old days of Bob Greaves being sexually assaulted by an elephant on Granada Reports. +2 points.

BAD: And then we remember how long ago that was, and how age has withered our once youthful looks. Damn. –1 point.

FINAL SCORE: 17.9995 POINTS

While it’s certainly a bit of a disappointment as a Shaun Micallef vehicle because there’s not really enough of him in it, we’re nothing if not optimists. It’s a moderately entertaining game show in its own right, and on top of that, it’s hosted by Shaun Micallef. That’s a good thing, if you’re asking us. As long as the full series of Inspektor Herring isn’t too far away, that is.

Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation is possibly available to watch online here (we’re not sure, as our install of Firefox hates Ten’s webplayer). Failing that, diwana.org is your best bet.

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ITV4 = URLs>Violence Against Women

A few updates ago, we mentioned a phenomena we’re now going to dub “Why URLs Are Seemingly Worse Than Swearing According To Digital Channels” (clunky, but roll with it) after catching a More4 broadcast of The Daily Show which had a reference to The Daily Show’s website cackhandedly edited out of the UK broadcast. We also referred to the clumsy removal of the URL “Amazon.com” when Jon Stewart interviewed the boss of Amazon.com during an earlier edition of The Daily Show. We pretended to get all angry about it, and then complained that Someone Ought To Do Something, without planning to Do Something ourselves (other than whine about it). Such is our wont.

Anyway, during our latest meander through the BrokenTV PVR (258 unviewed programmes, 30.17% available space) we stumbled over an old episode of Tarrant On TV, dating from 2005 and repeated a couple of months ago from ITV4. As generally happens during many episodes of the long-running series, in a link nearing the end of part one, Chris Tarrant’s face switches from “cuh! those zany foreign comedy shows, eh? mode” to “full newsflash-level gravitas mode” within the space of a comma. Time for some serious, issue-based clips.

Now, it’d be easy to embark on a Generic Blog Hack Rant about jarring gear changes when it comes to Tarrant (nee Clive James) on TV, but the fact of the matter is that they do serve a purpose. The viewer is feeling quite jolly after seeing the latest adverts for Thai bidet wholesalers (or in this specific example, a spoof advert from Saturday Night Live for a luxury car with a functioning vagina called The Mistress, aimed at the duplicitous husband market, followed by a hidden camera “lady doctor is actually dominatrix” bit), so that when a harrowing drunk driving advert from New Zealand is shown, the message has that much more of an impact. Much in the same way as “serious message” adverts tend to hit home when preceded by an ad for Moonpig.

The “serious bit” of the edition of Tarrant on TV that we’ve just watched followed immediately on from the aforementioned SNL shagmobile skit and Dr Whiplash stunt. The intro ran thus:

Jollyface Tarrant: “Those thrashings were almost slapstick”

Serious comma time.

Serious Tarrant: “but this next hard-hitting commercial from New York delivers a much more sombre message to expose violence that is not just unacceptable, but totally inexcusable.”

There then followed an advert for a New York woman’s refuge called “My Sister’s Place”, showing a scene where a boss punched a nervous female latecomer to his meeting, simply for arriving a few minutes late. Cue a caption pointing out that such actions are similarly unacceptable in the home, but that there is someone who can help. A powerful message, followed up with Chris Tarrant making the following introduction to the next clip.

“Now, here in Britain, Womankind Worldwide is another charity that strives to stamp out the many forms of abuse suffered by many women around the globe. Their funds and human resources are used to empower women and to take control of their lives,  But, in order to raise those funds, they sometimes have to resort to shocking imagery in order to bring home the plight of their sisters.”

Opening scene. A poor African village. A screaming woman is being held down while a doctor gets ready to perform an act of genital mutilation on her, the tradition being that should the woman be unable to enjoy sex, she will be compelled to remain faithful to her husband. But as the doctor unsheathes a knife and nears the terrified woman, an invisible force grabs the knife from his hand, then throws him backwards, away from the operating chair.

Scene two. Bombed out remains at the heart of a war-torn city. A young man has grabbed a woman from the street, and is now dragging her into the deserted shell of what was once a home. He throws the frightened refugee to the ground, and menacingly unfastens his trousers. As he begins to near the woman,  he is suddenly held back by the same invisible entity. Despite his struggles, he is dragged away from the sobbing woman.

Scene three. A suburban English kitchen. An angry husband – and it’s worth pointing out here that we’re not talking about an archetypical sitcom ‘angry husband’ character, this guy is genuinely menacing – walks in and confronts a dishevelled and clearly distressed wife, visibly quivering with apprehension at what is about to happen. The husband yells at his wife over the state of the kitchen, leading to a meek verbal retaliation from the wife. Enraged, the husband pulls his fist back to strike, but his arm is pulled back by the invisible force. This time, the weight of the force holding back the aggressor can be seen more clearly in a close-up, with Raimi-grade pressure marks now visible on the bare arm of the husband, his arm straining with all his might to strike forward. The invisible force however, manages to keep him at a safe distance from his victim.

The scene shifts to a boiling pot on the cooker, in the background of the kitchen. A series of captions appear. “We can be there.” “But only with your help. Womankind Worldwide”, followed by the URL of the non-profit organisation’s website.

And what is that URL? The website address any women in a similar situation might want to visit? Well:

ITV4 have helpfully blurred it out, lest a website address be broadcast on screen. That’ll teach those, erm, fatcat women’s refuge centres based in the UK. Nice one, ITV.

That unseen website address in full: http://www.womankind.org.uk/

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Bye Then, Granada

Don't let your rich 79 year history hit you on the arse on your way out. Reports that the local news in the north-west of England is to be rebranded ‘ITV Studios Inc Reports’ are said to be ‘made up’. On the positive side, it will mean that the horrible typeface used atop the studios in Quay Street (pictured) might finally be taken down after forever.

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Heeeere’(wa)s Johnny

Due to what can only be described as ‘circumstances’, the BrokenTV gang found themselves sat at home for most of today watching old telly programmes. One of which was a compilation featuring prime cuts of ‘The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson’, taken from the 1960s and 1970s, which only added weight to our theory that Johnny Carson might just be the greatest television personality of all time. Relentlessly warm, quick-witted, but always willing to allow the guests the lions share of the limelight when it would be more entertaining. Even when they’re of the feathered variety, as this clip shows:

A good example of Carson’s lightning-quick wit comes from 1973. Tonight Show announcer and sidekick Ed McMahon was fronting a live advert-within-the-show for Alpo dog food (as used to happen with big US TV shows, referenced excellently in the Larry Sanders episode ‘The Garden Weasel’). The spot entailed McMahon scooping some of the dog food out into a bowl, where it would be gobbled up by a grateful pooch in order to highlight the beef-based magnificence of Alpo.

“The real beef could be the reason Hernandez here… c’mere boy… come on….”

Live television being what it is, the disinterested mutt merely sniffed at the food before buggering off, leaving a floundering McMahon looking around for rescue. Now, normally, that would be enough for a nice big laugh and a smattering of applause from the audience before moving on to the rest of the show. Column inches in the press might bring some extra attention to the programme, and the whole event would make for an easy ‘best of’ clip the next time a compilation show is put together.

However, that wasn’t enough for Carson. The second it became clear the camera-shy canine wasn’t going to return, Carson trotted across the set and bounded into shot on all fours, recasting himself as the hound, like some sort of quadrupedal Lucy Robinson. Reaching down, Carson picked up the bowl of dog food and pretended to wolf down the marrowbone jelly coated chunks within, to howls of laughter from the audience and crew. Wagging his ‘tail’ appreciatively and gratefully nuzzling the leg of McMahon, within ten seconds he’d selflessly rescued his friend from an embarrassing moment, saved the blushes of the show’s sponsor (not to mentioned handing them a minor PR coup), but most of all, quadrupled the merriment quotient for everyone involved.

And, speaking as an unpopular television blog unable to go anywhere near the smell of dogfood, the fact that one of US television’s biggest ever stars would be willing to shove his face so close to a bowl full of the stuff on a whim is especially laudable.

Layering on a few extra scoops of pleasure from any situation was pretty much the trademark of Carson, but there were also plenty of moments where Carson could push at the strict boundaries of what the network deemed ‘acceptable’. Perhaps his most celebrated bit was his Carnac the Magnificent character,

Carnac, donning a hugely ornate turban, would take a ‘hermetically sealed’ envelope, place it to his mystic forehead, and using his special psychic powers announce the answer to a question printed on a card inside the envelope. Once the answer had been read out, Carnac would open the envelope, remove the card from within, and tell everyone the question he had just answered. A cut price mock-up of Jeopardy! would have been a less elaborate way of doing the same bit, but would have been a lot less fun.

Now, much of the time, the questions and answers would relate to current events (well, then-current events. He wasn’t that psychic), such as California Governor Jerry “Aber Alles” Brown dating singer Linda Ronstadt, or the antics of Soviet Foreign Affairs Minster Andrei Gomyko. Gloriously however, they could just as easily be a bit of silly wordplay, such as the following exchange:

Carnac, putting the envelope to his temple: “Dippity doo!”

Ed McMahon: “Dippity doo?”

Carnac shoots McMahon a withering glare as he opens the envelope to read out the unseen question.

Carnac: “What forms on your dippity early in the morning.”

See? A good joke, repeated utterances of silly made up words, and it turns out to be a gag about smegma! On NBC! In 1972! Happily, YouTube is awash with pieces of Johnny Carson magnificence, so here’s one of said clips. This, and the many similar clips on YouTube are well worth a look. If nothing else, they might give a bit of valuable background for jokes in old episodes of Larry Sanders and The Simpsons.

Update:

We’ve now found a quick and easy to use video splitter program that isn’t hateful, so here’s that dog food clip in full. From now until the legal department of a faceless corporation demands its removal, enjoy:

Obviously, the whole thing works more effectively when you're not expecting it, but just appreciate that expert timing. A master of his art.

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Friday! Night! Kicks!

Friday night telly isn't what it used to be. It used to be the case that the BBC and Channel Four would do strive to outdo each other by putting out the very best comedy shows they could muster. Father Ted, Friends (no, it was good when it started, shut up), Frasier, Friday Night Live, QI, Absolutely, Vic Reeves Big Night Out, The Friday Night Armistice, Hippies (again, no, it was good, you're wrong), Black Books, The IT Crowd, The Adam & Joe Show, Peep Show, TV Offal, A Bit Of Fry and Laurie, Fist of Fun, KYTV, The All-New Alexei Sayle Show 2 and many others that we'll kick ourselves later on for not mentioning have all seen new episodes going out on Friday nights in the past. What do we have on the Friday night schedule at the moment?

A 'best of' compilation show of Wipeout, which was only on a few bloody weeks ago. And to compound matters, the links by Richard Hammond were seemingly recorded at the same time as his original links (though there isn't a new commentary), and if you're going to do this sort of thing it really ought to be unexpurgated coverage of the Big Balls obstacle, from every contestant who took part and nothing else, because that's the best bit. Frankly, they should have listened to us and flown everyone to Japan to take part in Takeshi's Castle instead. Have I Got News For You?, back for its 935th series, and now with a massive 90% reduction in the panel just laughing at clips from YouTube. Thing is, if you like the show, you're more likely to watch the longer edit on Saturday nights, because that includes all the business with soundchecks and retakes. So, why bother with the Friday night edit? Similarly, QI XL. (Yes, we know more people watch the Friday night versions. Leave us alone.) Reggie Perrin, which we'll save comment on for now because we've not watched any of the show since episode one. But hey, we haven't felt compelled to watch any of it since episode one, so "go" "figure".

Meanwhile, on Channel Four: Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares USA. Well, you could always close your eyes and imagine the voiceover by Gordon Kennedy is a really long-winded Absolutely sketch. Oh, and a film.

Well, thanks to YouTube's Applemask (who, we're now going to speculate, fights crime on the mean streets of Uttoxeter whilst concealing his identity with a mask that looks like a Golden Delicious) here's something to watch. It's all three parts of his In The Face look at ITV continuity in the South West of England over the years. We like it, and if you don't, you're doing it wrong.

Mask-o has also recently filed similarly lovely reports on Granada and TV-am, but we'll embed those when we're looking for another easy upd... er, a new opportunity to offer alternative viewing to disgruntled terrestrial viewers. Or, you could visit his YouTube profile, which is here, which pretty much prevents us from getting another update out of them. Hey ho, they're well worth watching all the same.

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An Open Letter to **AWKWARD JUMP CUT** More4

Hello there, More4. Long time viewers, first time authors-of-an-open-letter-to-you.

So, we’re sitting back and finally catching up on the last few weeks of Daily Show goodness, as broadcast on More4. One of these episodes was from the 28th of April, which saw an interview with Cliff May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Now, quite often, More4 will need to make subtle edits to the show (which goes out at 11pm in the US, but at 8.30pm in the UK), such as snipping Jon Stewart’s outro to any commercial break that we don’t have, or masking the already-censored word “F***” so that' it’s just a blurry blob. To reiterate, Mr More4, those are Comedy Central’s asterisks there, we have no qualms about using the word ‘fuck’.

Occasionally, especially daft edits are made. For example, when Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos guested on the show to plug his films revamped e-book reader, the on-screen caption for More4 viewers was changed to “Jeff Bezos, Amazon.[blurry blob]”. In addition, the pattern of Amazon logos on the huge screen at the back of the set were blurred out. We know why this was done, Ofcom has stringent rules on product placement outside of commercial breaks and sponsor bumps, meaning things like this have to be limited. But all that was slightly undone when the interview itself mentioned Amazon and Amazon.com several times, not to mention that the entire reason well-known people allow themselves to be interviewed in such programmes is to sell their most recent product. And that applies to each and every single chat show since about 1981.

Meanwhile, huge amounts of in-programme advertising go on during most sporting events, with logos splattered over everything larger than an atom, whether it drives around a track, kicks a ball or is made of wood. Of course, there’s probably a footnote somewhere on Ofcom’s website to allow all that (jiggered if we can find it though, their search function doesn’t seem to like looking for broadcasting regulations whenever we go there). We’re guessing you’ve got a paper copy of it, More4. The relevant piece of legislation has probably been chiselled numerous times into the granite that makes up the walls of your edit suite.

Forgive us, we’ll meander back to the actual point, to Cliff May and Jon Stewart’s interview of him. We’ve transcribed the full introduction to the interview, as seen on Comedy Central. We’ve also transcribed the version that you saw fit to broadcast.

COMEDY CENTRAL EDIT:

Jon Stewart, addressing the home audience: "[I've] just interviewed Cliff May. It was, er, supposed to be a six minute interview, erm, about torture, and it went, er, eight thousand."

THE STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS POLITELY.

Jon Stewart: "So, all we could give you is a little taste of it, the rest of it is on the website. Er, very spirited discussion, very enjoyable, er... here it is."

CUT TO INTERVIEW.

MORE4 EDIT:

Jon Stewart, adressing the home audience: "[I've] just interviewed Cliff May. It was, er, supposed to be a six minute interview, erm, about torture, and it went, er, eight thousand."

THE STUDIO AUDIENCE LAUGHS POLITELY.

Jon Stewart: "So, all we could give you is a little taste of it"

MASSIVE JARRING CUT INTERRUPTING STEWART BEFORE HE CAN PROPERLY PRONOUNCE THE 'T' IN 'IT'

Jon Stewart: "very spirited discussion, very enjoyable, er... here it is."

CUT TO INTERVIEW.

So, More4, what the jiggery fuck was that about, hey? Foreign broadcasters mentioning websites too outrageous for you, especially when they aren’t polite enough to read out the URL? Do you think the More4 audience, the very same audience you’re asking to take on Tony Robinson in a pub quiz, would be baffled at the concept of a website that isn’t Channel4.com? Were you hoping that it might lure viewers away from your own video-on-demand catch-up service 4OD, which of course is located online at http://www[MASSIVEJARRINGJUMPCUT] nd isn’t as popular as iPlayer? Really, stop doing stuff like this, it demeans the viewer, and cheapens your channel.

Yours belatedly,
BrokenTV (Mrs).

PS. We’ll forgive you if you buy up the rights to The Colbert Report now that FX don’t want it any more.

As for everyone else, here’s the video of the unexpurgated interview More4 seemingly don’t want you to see.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Cliff May
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

[Footnote: there’s an episode of The Larry Sanders Show where the blurry logo tactic was used on Larry’s sweatshirt on non-terrestrial broadcasts (erm, not in-show, in the real-life broadcasts). When we watched the episode, this distracted us so much, we couldn’t concentrate on the dialogue until we’d identified which logo was being censored. After a few seconds work – it wasn’t very well hidden – we’d deciphered the branding as being a Nike swoosh. We must have watched the episode in question over ten years ago (it was the first time the show was repeated on Paramount), and yet we still remember the very thing that was trying to be hid from view. We can’t remember anything about corporate logos from that period that weren’t censored. This suggests a couple of things. Firstly, we’re a bit tragic. Secondly, the whole practice of doing this is stupid.]

Right, we're off out to get unduly angry about misplaced apostrophes on signs at car boot sales.

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Eurovision 2009 Live Blog!

[20.00] It’s about to start. Refresh for updates, and expect semi-regular micro-updates on Twitter too, on the #twumpet hashtag (please feel free to follow us, as long as you’re not a stupid Twitter spammer, in which case you should shove a pine cone down your windpipe instead).

First, a warning. If you’re thinking of buying this:

Don’t, because it’s not very good.

[20.02] An early apology from Graham Norton for not being Terry Wogan. We reckon Norton will be a good host here, and he’s certainly refraining from enforced wackiness as the bollocks opening ceremony gets underway. Will this opening ceremony be as bollocks as the bollocks ceremony which opened the first semi-final? Well, it’s already broken the first rule of opening ceremonies, by being the second one of it, if you know what we mean.

Note to selves: be more interesting. And don’t end up just uploading screen grabs that have been on the BrokenTV PVR for months, like this one of Geoffrey Palmer looking annoyed from The Long Walk To Finchley.

[20.14] Different hosts from the semi-finals. Hopefully less annoying hosts, too. Anyway, first song, from Lithuania, and it’s… a dull ballad that your mum would probably like if it wasn’t all in foreign.

We have noted this on our scoreboard, more of which later.

[20.20] Israel’s song is performed by a Jewish lady and an Arabic lady, and about how peace is lovely, while war is bad. Is it *very* wrong to think that a prolonged and bloody conflict is actually preferable to "togetherness anthems" like this? It is? Oh.

[20.24] France’s go. We really like loads of French music, from Air, to Gainsbourg, to MC Solaar, to Stereo Total, to France Gall, to Sebastien Tellier, who was last year’s entry. Plus, one of our easily-disproved half-baked theories is that French is the best language to sing in, so we should like this song. It’s a bit meh, actually, but the best one so far, and performed in an admirably low-key way.

[20.27] Sweden’s turn, and it’s a great big overproduced disco/opera crossover. The sort of tune you’d expect ITV Sport to choose as a theme for a European Championships tournament.

It’s very daft, the singer looks perpetually surprised, and it’s quite good fun.

[20.32] Croatia’s tune sadly isn’t co-written by Adrian Chiles, which is a shame. He’s fluent in their tongue, y’see. It’s another dull ballad, performed by a smug bloke in a tight shirt.  He does an occasional bit of business with one eyebrow, as if auditioning for the Croatian remake of the Cadbury’s advert. There is also a backing singer given undue prominence on the stage, possibly because she’s very pretty and wearing a flowing silky white dress.

[20.35] Portugal’s entry kicks off with a lone guitar almost as if it’s going to be ‘First Day Of My Life’ by Bright Eyes. Sadly, it isn’t that, but the ensuing tune does have accordions in it, and is quite jolly. If nothing else, it deserves a prize for Most Demented Series Of Images Broadcast Onto The Set.

So bright and jolly it could even cheers up Jack Dee on a rainy Monday.

[20.40] Iceland. Will it sound like Sigur Ros or Bjork? Neither, it’s Jóhanna Guðrún Jónsdóttir (we’ve opened up the Wikipedia page on the final, so we can start quoting names now), doing – hnngh – another ballad. Come on, we want stupid bollocks electropop!

[20.43] Splendidly, here come Greece, with Anastasios "Sakis" Rouvas. No sooner had we mentioned stupid bollocks electropop, too. And he has props.

It’s the first song we’ve seen tonight that is crying out to be remixed by the Pet Shop Boys.

[20.46] Armenia’s Inga and Anush drop their science on those assembled. Best outfits of the night, and a nice little pop tune, too.

If anyone with an ounce of musical talent is reading this (indeed, if anyone whatsoever is reading this, we have our doubts), can someone do a mash-up of this combined with Andrew WK’s I Get Wet. Pretend it’s still 2002, and that mash-ups are still fashionable, it could be a winner.

[20.51] It’s Russia’s song, performed by Anastasiya Prikhodko. Russia’s the nation that gave the world Tatu, and some other decent pop bands too probably, yet this is the best they’ve got to other. Suffice to say: it’s a dull ballad, even if there is a bit of shouting at the end.

[20.54] The Azeri entry kicks off with sexy dancers dressed as lady vicars. Promising. It’s a big bouncing bollocks disco number. Also promising. Sadly, like a firework left in a plastic bag on the wet grass for too long, it sort of fizzles away to nothing. Pfft. Still, those dancers, eh?

[20.57] Graham announces the next track as being a ‘storming anthem’. Sadly, Bosnia and Herzegovina's entry seems to be a rubbish boy band, doing a rubbish ballad. Good time to put the kettle on, though.

[20.59] While everyone else gets adverts, we get Sexy Russian TV Presenter talking to some singing Moscovites. Jolly enough, but we’d much rather get to dip into deranged East European television commercials.

[21.04] Moldova’s turn, with Nelly Ciobanu. Traditional outfits, and a song that probably qualifies as ‘traditional’. Not especially interesting, and it doesn’t even provide us with an ‘in’ for mentioning how Front 242 once did a song called Moldova. We think.

[21.06] It’s Malta’s Chiara, providing Graham with an easy opportunity for a ‘Malteser’ gag. The only interesting thing we know about Malta is that their addresses are possibly the shortest in the world. “27 Smithson Road, Malta” is an actual, viable address for something being sent to Malta. Oh, hang on. That’s not very interesting. The song is Another Dull Ballad.

[21.10] Estonia’s ‘Urban Symphony’, which is a teeth-gnashingly bad name for a band. First on-stage string section of the night, which means the song is… you’ve guessed it. We’ll just use the abbreviation ‘ADB’ from now on.

[21.14] Denmark’s track, penned by Ronan Keating. Surprisingly, it’s a barnstorming electroclash versus hip-hop epic, with go-go dancers on stage breathing fire. Well, in our imagination, anyway. In reality, it’s a song written by Ronan Keating.

[21.18] Here come Germany! Land of Scooter, Tok Tok vs Soffy O, U96, and half of Stereo Total. It’s called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and it’s a ridiculously catchy bollocks swing-disco number. This is a good thing. We want this one to win, frankly.

And that was before Dita Von Teese turned up. Frigging heck, this is good. Graham Norton hated it, meaning we now hate him.

[21.22] Turkey, more entertaining pop nonsense. A bit like a track on an Shakira album that wasn’t deemed good enough to be a single.

Also: us recording Have I Got News For You on BBC Two means that screencapping is more difficult from this point on.

[21.27] Norton slags off Albania’s entry before it begins (God, how we hate him). It’s not actually that bad, at least you could dance to it, if you’re particularly drunk. The breakdancing mimes can frig off, though.

[21.30] Norway, one of the favourites to win. Only, of course, IT’S ALL A CON, ALL THE EAST EUROPEAN STATES VOTE FOR EACH OTHER, IT’S ALL A FIX WAH WAH WAH. It’s a young bloke with a good singing voice playing a violin while his mates do press-ups. While we don’t really like it that much, it is the sort of song that does really well in Eurovision. And we know our stuff, we’ve now watched a total of one-and-a-half Eurovisions.

If there were a special prize for Daft Expression Of The Night, that bloke on the right would win.

[21.34] Anarchy! It’s the Ukraine! A-ha-ha-ha. It’s by Svetlana Loboda, and it seems to be interesting Kylie-lite breathy pop, which is a good thing. Excellently, the song is called "Be My Valentine! (Anti-Crisis Girl)”, which we like because it sounds like the title of a Japanese movie where a high-school honey has to contend with keeping two boys interested at the same time as being a part-robot crime fighter.

Don’t die on us now, screencapping program!

[21.38] Romania, with another glitzy bouncy pop effort. It as if they’ve saved up the interesting songs until the end. Man, whichever country is the next to put in Another Dull Ballad right now is going to get buggered right up the scoreboard! We’d hate to be those guys!

[21.40] Boh.

The background entertainment for the song from Ukraine – best song of the night – was camp blokes on wheels dressed as gladiators. The UK has lizard king Andrew Lloyd Webber sitting at a piano. As Dull Ballads go, it’s not that bad, but y’know, we’re going to finish fourth from bottom at best, aren’t we?

OR ARE WE? Big reaction from the crowd, but there’s no way we’ll win with that song. Really, The Powers That Be, get Ladytron involved next year.

[21.45] Here come Finland, and it’s another magnificently catchy pop song. That one could win, and Waldo's People is the best band name of the night.

[21.48] Last up, Spain. An earnest pop track that isn’t as good as the offerings by Germany, Finland and Ukraine.

Next up: the scores, i.e. the only bit we used to bother watching.

We did start compiling a table of how many genres were represented tonight, but we have up halfway. In summary: Dull Ballads in first place, gabba techno woefully snubbed for the 54th consecutive year.

[22.05] A straw poll of the BrokenTV office has come up with the following top three:

1. Ukraine,

 

2. Germany,

 

3. Finland

Fingers crossed those YouTube clips don’t make Windows Live Writer fall over.

[22.16] Cutaway segment to an interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber. If this means we’re missing out on Tatu performing (well, miming) live on stage again, we’re going to set fire to Television Centre.

[22.18] Scores. We’re not going to bother commentating live on those, as it’d be hugely dull, but we do like the progress bar at the bottom of the screen, as if we were ‘installing’ the results onto a computer or something.

[22.33] The UK is doing surprisingly well, while all of our favourites are languishing in mid-table. That shows what we know, but we do take some comfort in the fact we’re right and everyone else is stupid. Twitter highlight of the night is certainly Graham Linehan’s method of announcing his own scores:

Yay for @glinner!

While all this is going on, it’s abundantly clear that Norway have won, which is annoying because it means everyone else is going to try and copy that song for next year’s contest. At least when Lordi won it, it meant lots of countries tried thinking outside of the box for the next few contests. Now the security blanket of mediocre balladry seems to be the way forward, we feel a Wogan-style rant brewing. We may well not bother live blogging Eurovision 2010. Yeah, take that, society!

[22.41] As part of a score-break, we see a traditional folk band playing a cover of Not Gonna Get Us by Tatu, a fact pointed out by Graham Norton. Not sure Terry would have noticed that. We like Norton again now.

[22.45] Scariest national points-announcer of the night: Bosnia-Herzegovina. At a frigging canter.

[22.57] It seems, thanks to a Tweet from @divaschematic, the scary points bloke from Bosnia-Hertzegovina was last year’s entry from the former Yugoslavic region. And quite right she is too, how could we have forgotten?

 

Where were all the entertainingly deranged acts like that this year? NOWHERE, that’s, erm, not where.

[23.08] Well, Norway won, and Graham Norton proved to be a likeable enough commentator. Not as good as Wogan was, but it was his first stint, and he was certainly much better than the commentator BBC Three used for the semi-finals. We only seem to have lost two followers on Twitter after three hours of mindless Twattering on about Eurovision, which is a minor win for us, but it was a shame the songs we liked most did so badly. Now to listen to some credible music (the new Jason Lytle album is very good, pretty much another Grandaddy album) and play online GTA4. And for any regular readers of the blog who don’t give a flying toss about Eurovision, we promise not to mention it again for at least another fifty-one weeks. G’night!

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