So as I posted yesterday, last night was the Eurovision finals 2011.
I spent my night watching rai2 and writing to my boyfriend on skype to discuss each of the acts.
My first reaction of the night was nothing to do with the show itself but with Rai. Rai you are possibly the worst television broadcaster ever. Not only do you annoy me with you constant advert breaks, yes I missed the half time performance because Rai had to make it’s sponsors happy, just bring in a TV licence already, but also your format of presenting the show.
Now its been a while since I’ve watched it properly in the UK, but as I remember it you pretty much have a live coverage from the arena, with a running commentary.
Oh no that’s way to impersonal for Italy. No we had a studio set up, similar to a talk show. We had the presenter, Raffaella Carrà (you would have seen her giving out Italy’s results), sat on stage with Bob Sinclar (who speaks no Italian), behind them was a fairly large screen showing the concert, surrounding the stage was a panel of judges, and then surrounding them was a large studio audience. No what annoyed me about this set up was that the show appeared to be more about these Italians than what was happening in Duesseldorf. Every opportunity they had, they came back to the studio. We pretty much missed most of the opening apart from Lena’s part in the song, although they kept focusing Raffaela back into the foreground to show her skills at dancing in her seat. The only time we got to watch the show undisturbed was during the countries’ performances. The results part was the worst. It was practically 70% discussion in the studio and 30% results on screen. Even when the results were on the screen we couldn’t hear anything because Raffaella and her crew were still having their own conversation. There were many times when I was actually screaming “show the f****ing results!!!” at the screen (don’t worry I was home alone).
Ignoring the awful direction of the show, I found Raffaela to be very unprofessional. Now I know our commentators in the UK like to joke around about the other acts, but Raffaela’s comments were just b*tchy. At the beginning of the results when the UK were actually top and Italy wasn’t really getting anywhere she was all happy for the UK and Sweden and Azerbaijan. “There performance was really good”, “Blue is one of the best boy bands from the UK”, “He’s young and will appeal to the young girls” etc etc. Then all of a sudden Italy begins to climb up (When San Marino and Spain gave there results you could see that they were all thinking “you better give us 12 points!!!”, in fact Rafaella practically said that about San Marino.) and her whole attitude changed. All of a sudden comments like “Why??? I didn’t even understand there song! What were people listening too?” (– Azerbaijan) and “Oh come on, just because he’s good looking!” (- Sweden) were spouting out of her vicious mouth. I’m surprised she didn’t go the whole hog and us the “Azerbaijan isn’t even in Europe” line.
I also didn’t enjoy the addition of Bob Sinclar. I found it rather awkward. I mean his comments were witty, especially his dig at one of the acts French pronunciation, but he doesn’t speak Italian so he was really just sad there twiddling his thumbs and looking bored and neglected for most of the show. Raeffella did talk to him, but by the end of it she was beginning to get a bit patronising with Italy beginning to top the table and France lagging way behind. “ooo 6 points to France, well done” *gives him a little hug*. I just thought he was an odd guest to have. Maybe Fabri Fabra was busy?
All in all, I think that Germany hosted a good show (of what I could see from behind Raeffi’s big head”) and there were some really good acts. I think Italy deserved to come 2nd although honestly I was surprised. I’m glad that Jedward didn’t win, hopefully they can now crawl back into their pit, grow up and get a day job. I’m proud that we managed to stay on the left hand side of the board. I personally don’t agree with the result, but that’s Eurovision for you.
Oh one more thing…Sweden was so fit!
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