SBS brings Eurovision fever to Australia

Just under a fortnight ago I had the fortune to attend a SBS filming for "The A to Z of Eurovision" - a preview and history show of sorts for Eurovision screening the week prior to the final.

This is part personal review and preview of what you'll see on your screens in a fortnights time...

The show is hosted once again by the wonderful Julia Zemiro (star of 'Rockwiz' and original cast member of 'Eurobeat') and Sam Pang.

Don't expect personal insights from these two however, or loads of secrets to be revealed from their first venture into Eurovision land last May.
This show is purely scripted, and stuck to the formula of "A is for... Australia", etc

The good -
Admittedly "A is for Australia" sounded rather silly considering we can't actually be part of Eurovision - but it served as a segue for an interview with 'Mr Eurovision' Johnny Logan, 3 time winner for Ireland, who was born in Frankston. Ahhhh yes, Australia DOES have a relationship with Eurovision! Even if only 10 people in the audience remembered the words to "Hold Me Now", it was a much appreciated appearance.
There are other pre-recorded, out of studio interviews scattered amongst the show. These include Gina G (another proud Aussie) who represented the UK in 1996, and also Dima Bilan, winner for Eurovision in 2008, who just proclaimed how excited he was in his limited English (a nice little piece of filming from Dimas recent Aussie tour).

One of the 'moments' was the inclusion of Bjorn Again, both in mimed performance and also as reviewers of some of this years entries. It appears they did more research and knew more than their hosting counterparts.

And also Meow Meow (who?), burlesque dancer, giving fashion tips was funnier than anything on the show (made all the funnier by what she was in fact wearing as fashion). At the end she turned out to be THE highlight of the show, performing a wonderful rendition of 'Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son' - the winning song from Luxembourg in 1965 sung by Frances Gall.

I'm against having guests on a show about something that have no relationship to the topic or benefit to the momentum of the show, but Miow Miow certainly met the criteria a thousand times over. Unlike...


From good to just not good enough -
Les Murray singing 'Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu'. Not that Les was a bad singer, far from it. But one expects that they would at least ask the star PRIOR to filming whether he has any memories or relationship to Eurovision rather than during the filming and it looking awkward. Do we really want to talk about the World Cup on a Eurovision show? hmmm... a little potential audience research might say no...

Also, don't expect to see all of this years acts previewed on the show. There were a scattering of clips including the favourite Germany, and other favourite (ummm... since when!?!?) Armenia, short snippets of Belgium, Denmark, France, Romania, and the obligatory Greek entry, 'the crying girl from' Latvia, the 'so bad its brilliant' Lithuania, and 'the one to laugh at 'Serbia' (not my thoughts by the way, but how they were represented on the night).



From not good enough to the downright tacky -
All was looking good in terms of entertainment, detail and quality until the introduction of "The Eurovision dancers" about 1 minute into the show. The 6 dancers looked like they just stepped straight out of the 50th Eurovision anniversary, which was a cringeworthy experience even back then. They danced along to various classic songs, in no way representing anything original or referencing the original act.

There are also discussions on dancing, how to run a Eurovision drinking game and voting procedures. All good things to discuss in regards to Eurovision, but for me, this is where the show REALLY falls down. The somewhat self-proclaimed 'Eurovision Expert' featured managed to spend 5 minutes discussing the voting process and got it wrong. Surely if you are an expert you would get it right?
I know the details dont matter to most how voting occurs (especially in a country that cant vote), but talking about it like you are the authority on the subject and getting it all wrong is not on.


OVERALL -

This show will be a great piece of education and entertainment for the more casual Eurovision fan or SBS watcher, but there's nothing new to really be gathered here for the more avid fan apart from building up to the actual event. The representations given by the hosts were straight out of BBC/Terry Wogan witticisms book. They didnt go as far as to claim that Eurovision is all about sequins and political alliances (and thank god for steering clear of that stereotype), but it didnt exactly make it look like the professional and report it as the world biggest song contest either. They found the middle ground - Eurovision is fun, which for 99% of the viewership, it is.

It would be nice if SBS could take it a little more seriously though as one of their biggest rating shows every year. They have already laid the foundations - its own coverage rather than taking the BBC coverage we had for years. That was a huge step, introducing its own commentary rather than Wogan which really drove many people to watch it here for years. Wogan leaving was a godsend, and the opening for Australian viewers to get a more local flavour on the shows. So bravo to SBS for that. The next step, move away from the comedy side of things... let's give it some respect on our screens. If thats too much of a risk, perhaps hire a Eurovision expert to be part of the commentary team alongside the comedian? One who knows the facts and figures without an autocue and has something to say about the history and entries?
Or at least an expert Eurovision researcher that gets the facts right for the commentators to read (rather than straight off a press release)?

I'm waiting for your call SBS.

At least then you wouldn't need to be told to take Brinck off your website as this years entrant for Denmark.