The Gilded Age season three: prediction follow-up

Rejoice, costume-drama lovers – we made The Gilded Age happen! At the start, there wasn't as much buzz about the series as one would have thought, seeing that it's created by Julian "Downton" Fellowes. But now it seems to have gathered momentum and a sizeable fanbase, and I'm guessing it's in no small part thanks to a pacy and strong third season.

By now, it's become clearer what the series is, and what it isn't. It won't deliver exactly the same kind of drama as Downton did (I'll go more into that in a bit), but for what it is – a fun romp with the occasional scene that goes a little deeper, set in a glamorous time and with largely likeable characters – it's very good, and I suspect the best costume drama we will get in quite some time.

On to the follow-up to my predictions for this season. I'll try not to be too insanely spoilery, but I do want to gloat as I got more things right than I usually do in my prediction posts.

Gladys will marry the Duke – but not divorce yet YES All right, this one wasn't a hard one to call (though I also guessed what the trailer's divorce talk was really about, and that I am smug about). It was pretty clear from the trailer and on-set footage that there was going to be a wedding, and Gladys was the obvious pick for the bride part. Less predictably, her union with the fortune-hunting Duke hasn't turned out too terribly this far. The Duke of Buckingham aka Hector seems quite a nice chap, if a little prone to be pushed around by the women in his life. Then again, he's not the only man in The Gilded Age to be hen-pecked.

I really liked this turn of events. Not only because it was unexpected, but because it shows that Fellowes and his co-writer Sonja Warfield (who seems to be a strong addition to the team, judging by the episodes she's credited as co-writing) haven't set out to copy out well-known real-life dramas from the Gilded Age and simply foist them on their fictional characters. The Russells may be inspired by the Vanderbilts, but that doesn't mean Gladys is destined to be unhappy with her Duke, as little as it means that her parents are destined to divorce. It's nice to know that there isn't a historical cheat sheet which will give away what'll happen in the series – it makes it far more interesting.       

Agnes and Bertha will both try to stop Larrian (maybe even together) NO, BUT... Agnes and Bertha were shown to be in agreement once this season, but only about a fairly minor plot point. As far as Larrian is concerned, there's as little communication between the two matriarchs as ever. We did get to see, though, that Agnes was not thrilled about the prospect of welcoming Larry as her nephew-in-law, and was eager to encourage any doubts on Marian's side.

Was there ever as wet a blanket as Marian, I wonder? Her paramour isn't exactly the most exciting character either, though he does at least prove to be a capable business man. It is a shame that the central romance  of the series doesn't generate more heat, but there it is. Many great stories have had somewhat underwhelming hero-heroine romances. At least the concept of romance isn't spurned, and for this one should be grateful. Only, shockingly, I find myself missing bitchy Lady Mary. 

Peggy's new love interest's parents (probably the dad) will make trouble YES, BUT... I was right, except it was the prospective mother-in-law who had objections to Peggy, not Dr Kirkland's dad, who was all in favour of the match, though not very forcefully. The Kirkland men continue the Gilded Age trend of being rather too easily manipulated by their womenfolk.  

As for Peggy, she is a little too perfect, but she does have more bounce and more chemistry with her chosen man than Marian does. And the whole idea of including a "black elite" plot line in the series is genius. It's interesting in itself to learn more about the affluent black upper-middle class in late 19th-century New York, and it saves the series from going down the "colour-blind casting" route, of which I'm not a fan (I will save you the rant for now, but I'm not just thinking of the phenomenon from my pale-face perspective, honest). Peggy could do with a relatable flaw or two, but her part of the story is still engaging.    

The butler alliance will be sealed by events (I hope) NOT REALLY, NO I mean, Church and Bannister are friendly enough to each other now. But they're not united in any cause, and though the Van Rhijns/Brookes and Russells are starting to interact a little more, their servants hardly mix at all this season.

Here's where one of the big differences to Downton comes in. It has become clear by now that The Gilded Age isn't really an "upstairs-downstairs" drama. In the original Upstairs, Downstairs, the plot lines were fairly evenly distributed between the Bellamys and the servants, though with a slight advantage for the servants – even events upstairs were largely viewed from their point of view. In Downton Abbey, there was still an even distribution of plot lines, and a slightly mellower approach to servant-master relationships which angered many an armchair socialist (though it's not as if the Bellamys were bad employers, or the Crawleys unfailingly good ones). 

In The Gilded Age, on the other hand, the focus is squarely on the upstairs families. The servants are nice and all, and get more screen time than in, say, The Forsyte Saga, but they don't get many juicy plot lines or for that matter much character development. They're pretty much stuck the way they were in season one. I think Fellowes may have had more plans for the servant side of things at the start, but gave up when all the different characters and plots became too much to juggle.        

Oscar will try to make money YES It's not all plain sailing for doe-eyed Oscar, but at least he's a surprisingly dab hand at business. The plan he has lined up for next season could prove to be interesting.

In the any other business category, one can note that this was yet another strong season for Aunt Ada (though I could have done without the temperance plot), but not the strongest for my favourite George Russell. He did eventually stand up to Bertha, but only after it could have done any good for Gladys or anyone else. His continuing coldness towards Bertha just seems mulish at this point. Plus his sacking of Clay was completely uncalled-for, even if Clay turned out to be a worm later on. J. P. Morgan was quite fun, though.      

The Fantastic Four: First Steps: a good superhero movie, but not much MCU (for good or bad)

I may be a late joiner sometimes – that's certainly true of my interest in the MCU, which until about four years ago was non-existent. But once I'm into something, I tend to stick with it and hope desperately for it not to fail. You could say I'm very Swedish in that regard. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be considered a success, and a drop-off in box-office sales for its second weekend won't be too bad a sign (I mean, it still topped the box-office list domestically, so there's that).

What did I think of it myself? To use a quote from a reaction compilation video on YouTube: I liked it, but didn't love it. Make no mistake, though, it's well worth watching on the big screen, and the two-hour run time is relatively humane. (Is the length of films an equality issue? I have a vague impression that guys can hold it better, especially the young ones, and are thus more positive towards three-hour extravaganzas.)

The strengths of Fantastic Four are very strong indeed. It has likeable characters and is set in a world you are happy to explore. The acting is great and there's a lot of chemistry between the protagonists; they are convincing as "Marvel's First Family". I have a special soft spot for Joseph Quinn's Johnny Storm, and loved the scene where he managed to get through to the Silver Surfer and stir her conscience – after their semi-flirtation, which I also enjoyed, things suddenly got very serious.

The film also does many of the things that those in the know have urged Marvel to do for years. It introduces new characters, and does not rely on nostalgia (not for old MCU films, at any rate). No homework is required: people can watch Fantastic Four without having seen a single MCU film or TV show and follow it fine. Because the film's literally set in another universe, the world building feels fresh and inventive. The sassy "Marvel humour" everyone claims to be sick of is largely absent. The four protagonists' banter is more a way of bonding with one another than anything else, and draws an indulgent chuckle rather than right-out laughs. The effects are good and not rushed: main villain Galactus is an impressive sight.

My personal problem with this is that I like the classic MCU ingredients. I'm by no means tired of "Marvel humour" – it's one of the things that drew me into the MCU in the first place. Another canny thing the MCU films tended to do was to mix other genres with the superhero stuff, in order to attract mainstreamers like me. I was, after all, firmly anti-cape at one time, and to this day the action pieces where protagonists show off their "powers" are still what interests me least about a superhero flick (maybe in competition with all the agonising about "secret identities", which is mercifully absent from this as from most MCU movies).

It has been said approvingly of Fantastic Four, as of its box-office DC rival Superman, that they are very "comic-booky" films designed to win back comic-book readers who've found the Marvel and DC film universes a bit dreary. I can see that. Less dreariness is certainly welcome. But I'm not a comic-book reader – at least not the kind who's read superhero comics. It could be that exactly the ingredients that work best for "real" fans, who actually know and love the comic-book originals of these characters, slightly push away ignorant "normies" like myself.

But if you're into superhero movies, you should definitely watch this one. The story is a bit hokey, and some choices the characters make unfathomable (at one time, I sat whining quietly in my cinema seat: "no, don't tell them"), but it's well made and engaging. For my personal part, though, I think I prefer Thunderbolts*: a slice of the good old MCU, "Marvel humour" and all.    

They don't do entertaining tripe like First Knight anymore

Yesterday would have been the perfect day for blogging. I was stuck at home anyway, waiting for delayed luggage (which still hasn't arrived, by the way). In spite of a number of possible blog subjects, however, I just thought "nah". Why is summer blogging so difficult? Is it the weather? Post-travel inability to settle? Sheer laziness?

Anyway, a less complex subject for a blog post than First Knight, which for some reason (I'm not complaining) has made it to Netflix, would be hard to find. This schmaltzy Arthurian romance was filmed in the 90s, and it shows. I was surprised at how much it triggered my nostalgia. Back in the day, the younger me wasn't much taken with First Knight. I did not see the appeal of Richard Gere as the apparently irresistible Lancelot, and the depiction of Camelot wasn't close enough to how I imagined it (based on reliable sources such as Howard Pyle and the Prince Valiant comic). But now, a number of "gritty" reimaginings of the King Arthur legend later, this film feels endearingly straightforward.

The film centres on the famous love triangle between King Arthur, Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot (I've always felt torn about this part of the lore as Pyle, maybe mindful of his young readers, insisted that Guinevere and Lancelot were "just good friends"). Gere is Lancelot, Julia Ormond Guinevere – more beautiful than envious younger me gave her credit for – and an attractively regal mature Sean Connery is King Arthur. We also have Ben Cross, usually cast as an intensely brooding hero, as the intensely brooding villain Malagant (as far as I know a character made up for the occasion – what's wrong with Mordred, I'd like to know?). Not badly cast, in other words. John Gielgud, never too haughty when it came to his roles, shows up in a bit part.

The challenge anyone who wants to tackle the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle faces is that they're all good guys, but I can see that that's part of the story's appeal. First Knight solves the problem by not making Guinevere and Lancelot too duplicitious. They want to do right by Arthur, and only indulge in one bout of passionate kissing (that's when Arthur walks in). It's all very airbrushed, but I'm fine with that. It's in keeping with the silly bit of entertainment this film is.

For it is silly, I'll not deny it. In a battle sequence, Lancelot idiotically removes his helmet to let his locks fly free. Earlier, Guinevere marvels at his ability to channel rainwater in leaves, as if it were a consummate skill. The secondary characters have no function at all except to admire Lancelot's prowess and Arthur's wisdom or (if it's the villain's sidekick) sneer. The film has "formulaic, vaguely historical Nineties adventure/romance" written all over it, and I enjoyed it very much.

So what do I mean by my title? Surely generic adventure flicks are churned out all the time? Well, maybe, but it's not so easy to find entertaining hogwash of this kind, where some effort has been put into making the formula work, nowadays. Take the romance. I was partly ashamed of my prissy "whoa, there" reaction when Lancelot kisses Guinevere, whom he's just met, out of nowhere and claims "I know when a woman wants me". You wouldn't get a scene like that in a 2020s film, which is perhaps no great loss in itself, but a sign of how restricted the parameters of romance have become. When we say that something has "aged badly", what we often mean is that our own age has become more intolerant. Lads should not try this kind of behaviour at home, but fictional romances can't be wholesome all the time – it kills all the fun.

Then there's the Arthurian legend part. For the last couple of decades, when someone tries their hand at the King Arthur story, it's mostly in order to make it more "realistic" and "historical". But this, I would argue, is not what we want from a King Arthur story. We want the round table, Excalibur, Merlin, a brave Lancelot, a witty Gawain, the Lady of the Lake, at least one wicked sorceress, the whole caboodle. Of course that's not in any way a "true story", but the trueness isn't the appeal here, as little as it is in the Robin Hood myth. I've got my problems even with the sanitised merry folk hero Robin Hood, and would stomach him even less well were he to lean more into actual highwayman/robber behaviour.

First Knight does't tick all the Arthurian boxes – there's no Merlin, for example. But it doesn't try to turn Arthur into some boring Roman centurion or local chieftain, and for that I at least am grateful.

Mysteries of the box office: the case of Elio

Summer vacation blogging means low-hanging fruit. A Pixar film should do. The problem is, while I enjoyed Elio, there isn't an awful lot to discuss about it. Oddball kids united in friendship and shenanigans in colourful space settings are nice to see, but it's hardly new. The only unexpected part of this film was the focus on struggling parents or parent figures. Otherwise, Elio in its comfortable predictability is less easy to blog about than Turning Red or The Good Dinosaur, though I liked it better than both those films.

So let's return to the old angle of the box office. Since I last broached the subject, it has continued to puzzle me. I don't want to pan a film I haven't seen, but wasn't the success of Minecraft: The Movie somewhat surprising? I haven't seen a single good review of it. On the other hand, Thunderbolts*, appreciated by critics and by those who saw it (including me), did not draw the crowds. I know there's a gap between what critics and audiences like, but I'm not talking about snooty film buffs who abhor everything that isn't Bergman or Citizen Kane here. Popular YouTubers (well, most of them) enjoyed Thunderbolts*, but did it help the movie? did it heck.

And now, Elio, a good solid Pixar flick, has bombed despite good ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, while the lacklustre Moana 2 met box-office approval. It's hard to see a pattern here. Yes, there seems to be a fondness for "known IP", but Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was based on "known IP", and that was no help. (I've mentioned that it's good, right?) All whining aside, though, the disappointing audience figures for Elio at least provides a mystery to be pondered in a blog post. Why didn't people go to watch it?

To start with myself, I very nearly didn't go to watch it either. What put me off was that the story, judging by the trailers, didn't seem that engaging. True, there was an early trailer way back in 2023 (I think), which was worse, as the film then seemed to focus on a tiresome "Earth on Trial" plot (has anyone but Star Trek: Next Generation made that cliché work?). This story, I'm happy to say, has been scrapped completely, but maybe a few potential cinemagoers were scared off early. The later trailers, by contrast, looked nice enough, but had "good streaming content" written all over them. They didn't sell Elio as something you necessarily had to watch in cinemas.

In all fairness, maybe it's not, the magnificent visuals notwithstanding. I went to see it because 1) my summer vacation has started 2) I'm a mousehead who wants to keep Disney animation and Pixar in business 3) films aren't released for streaming as early as they once were, as Disney especially has become disenchanted with streaming services as a stable source of income and 4) it looked like a fun time. As it happens, Elio exceeded my expectations, though the story wasn't the film's greatest strength. It felt oddly paced at times, with the title character's orphan status being a particularly forced plot point which didn't elicit the pathos the film makers were perhaps hoping for. But I am glad I went and didn't wait around for months for the Disney + release.

What I appreciated most was the overwhelmed parent angle. As Elio's parents are both killed off (without explanation) before the story starts, he's living with his father's sister Olga, who has no family of her own and has to give up her ambition to become an astronaut in favour of her safe, earth-bound job in order to care for him. Elio picks up on how his presence has upended his aunt's life and draws the conclusion that he's unwanted. Aunt Olga's struggles to connect to Elio are paralleled, not very subtly, with those of the alien war lord Grigon, who doesn't understand his peaceful son Glordon at all, but who still loves him. The scenes where Elio and Glordon respectively finally realise how much they mean to their parent/parent figure pulled at my heartstrings far more than Elio's dead mum and dad.          

Maybe here's another clue as to why the film hasn't done better. There's plenty of fun for kids, and something to chew on for adults, but there isn't much for the inbetween audiences. I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend Elio to teenagers and twentysomethings, at least not as something they needed to see at the cinema. For this middle-aged aunt, though, it did the trick.

Predictions for season three of The Gilded Age (with very little to go on)

Right. I said I would do The Gilded Age predictions, didn't I? With season three coming next week, it's high time. 

The season trailer didn't exactly wow me, but I must confess there are some clues in it regarding what's to come (unlike in the trailer for the upcoming Downton movie, which is just an elegant nothing – not that I'm bitter). The trick will be to avoid all-to-obvious predictions. I mean, of course Larrian (I'm guessing that's what the Larry + Marian ship is called) will get well under way, and of course there will be friction between Aunt Agnes and Aunt Ada, who has the money now. That much is given. But what else could possibly happen?

Gladys will marry the Duke – but not divorce yet The marriage is a pretty safe bet; we see glimpses of a marriage in the trailer, and there's no way Larry and Marian will get that far in just one season. So it has to be Gladys, and unless her dad finally takes a stand against his wife and objects at the last minute, this means she's stuck with the Duke of Buckingham. Gladys's situation being based on that of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who eventually divorced the Duke of Marlborough, one could assume that Gladys is the woman whose divorce is talked about in hushed tones in the trailer. Generally, though, plot lines in The Gilded Age don't move that fast. Surely, her marriage has to be milked for juicy drama before it is discarded.

Who is divorcing, then? Blessed if I know. Mrs Fane, whose main function in the series seems to be to introduce Marian to a wider society than she'd encounter if Aunt Agnes had her way, is bringing the news. Could she be the one?

Agnes and Bertha will both try to stop Larrian (maybe even together) Fellowes has reportedly realised that it would be a good idea to bring his queen bees together in one scene. From the quote I heard, though, it didn't sound as if they'd be actually interacting much, but one can always hope. As I've said before, these characters are something of a disappointment to me – Agnes doesn't really hit the Dowager Countess spot she's supposed to, and Bertha is pretty much unbearable at this point. Some reluctant plotting over a common cause would do them a world of good drama-wise.

That Agnes will be opposed to the Larry-Marian romance is self-evident. Bertha's view is harder to guess, as she's keen to be allied to "old money" (or lack of money), and the Van Rhijns are the US counterpart to nobility. However, they're also (with the exception of Ada) skint. Bertha may well want something better for Larry, and she's been known to meddle in his love life before.

Peggy's new love interest's parents (probably the dad) will make trouble Peggy's shown looking blissful with a new man, a Dr Kirkland, who seems very respectable. But it can't all be peaches and cream, surely? Is there some significance to the fact that we already know who will be playing Kirkland's father? My guess is that Kirkland Sr., and/or possibly his wife, will object to Peggy for some reason, most likely her troubled past. 

Peggy may also have to face more virulent forms of racism than she has before in New York (not from the Kirklands, though, who are also black affluent middle-class). Any other showrunner would have included a swiwel-eyed racist bogey-man in Peggy's storyline by now, and I admire Fellowes for resisting the low-hanging fruit. But c'mon, nearly encountering a Southern lynch mob can't be it. Peggy needs dragons to slay.

The butler alliance will be sealed by events (I hope) Mercifully, butlers Bannister and Church buried the hatchet in the previous season. Now, they need a storyline which will bring them together, and unlike Agnes and Bertha's potential alliance their partnership should be for a good cause. Maybe they will join forces to help Jack the footman? I thought I spotted him looking well-dressed and giddy in the trailer. Most likely, someone will try to rip him off in order to get their hands on his invention, and he will need trusty servant back-up. 

Not that I've worked out why Church would get involved, but hey. I want the butlers to get on so badly I almost ship them.

Oscar will try to make money Oscar will feel keenly that he's let his mother down, and he'll try to make up for it in some way, possibly by trying to get back some of the money he lost. I'd rather have a romance plot involving Oscar, to be honest, or another marriage-as-window-dressing scheme. Let's face it, though: he'll never meet anyone better than John Adams, the most understanding ex-boyfriend ever.

New New Doctor Who season two: the parting of the ways?

Nowadays, I sometimes watch an old Doctor Who episode not just because I feel like it, but to remind me that Doctor Who actually was good during the first Davies era and the Steven Moffat era. I wasn't imagining it, and so back in December 2022, when I was so excited about the return of Russell T Davies (aka RTD), I had no way of knowing how hard his second stint as showrunner would crash and burn.

True, I was apprehensive about his politics, though not apprehensive enough as it turns out. The problem with Davies's second run – the "RTD 2" run – is that not only is the political commentary dialled up to eleven and clumsier than ever (and it wasn't exactly subtle in the olden days), but the things he did well are less in evidence, if at all. 

Where are the grounded characters and everyday situations that you believed in? I barely feel I know the new companions Ruby Sunday and Belinda Chandra at all. Ruby's adoptive mother Carla and grandmother Cherry had some promise, but they weren't given enough screen time to develop (and it was a shame that Carla ended up betraying Ruby in two aborted time lines over two seasons). All the UNIT staff seemed to be given about one or two character traits each. You can't blame the Who Culture youtubers for nicknaming Colonel Ibrahim "Colonel Sexy", because what else is he? I'm starting to wonder whether I like Kate Stewart simply because Jemma Redgrave is such a great actress, as I still don't quite know what the character is about after all these years. And what is Rose Noble (who ought to be in school) doing at the UNIT headquarters at all? Not even Davies himself seems to know. 

As for Belinda's family, I kept thinking there was a plot twist coming where it would turn out she actually didn't have any parents, in spite of her talking about them all the time, because we didn't get to meet them. Belinda's mother eventually makes a brief appearance, but her father is kept off-screen. What's with all the missing fathers? Davies, who once opened up Doctor Who to romantic girl-meets-Doctor storylines, seems to have acquired a new distaste for heterosexual mating and its manifestations.

While we're on the subject of characterisation, what happened to the characters being interestingly flawed even when they happen to tick some minority box? Ruth Madeley was allowed to play a complex character in Years and Years – the cheeky little sister whose judgment wasn't always sound (she voted for the dangerous populist Vivienne Rook). Her Shirley Bingham, on the other hand, is little more than a token disabled character, seemingly flawless.

What happened to bringing back characters from Classic Who in a meaningful and thrilling manner, instead of hauling them in and then completely wasting their potential? Who can forget the Dalek-Cyberman face-off ("this is not war, this is pest control"), the Master's return and the confrontation between the Doctor and Davros in RTD's first era? And now what do we get? Not one but two excellent actresses taking on the Rani, but given precious little to work with. The Rani is dispatched unceremoniously and without any real effort on the Doctor's part about midway through the final episode. Still, she is lucky compared to the other Classic Who villain Omega, resurrected as a soulless CGI monster then got rid of within minutes. I haven't even seen any Omega adventures, and I still felt offended. And what happened to the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, of whom we saw the merest glimpse but who then didn't appear in the finale at all? 

To get to the point, season two of the RTD 2 era had so many flaws they even became apparent to viewers who have no problem with the politics, which is still very much in evidence, as it was in season one. What particularly cheesed me off about the commentary this time around was that its particular target was white young men with a taste for gaming or social media – in other words, we got a look at what Davies imagines New New Who's angriest critics are like. 

Both Belinda's controlling ex-boyfriend Alan and the duplicitous podcaster Conrad were poorly understood caricatures. I should have enjoyed the episode "Wish World" as it contained a fake reality, a trope I'm usually a sucker for. But the moral arrogance behind the depiction of Conrad's Wish World as everything the seemingly progressive Davies despises was hard to watch. Of course a monster such as Conrad must be in favour of women staying in the home, against homosexuality and ignorant even of the existence of the disabled and "dispossessed". Unlike, one imagines, Davies, who is all for rainbows and puppies and world peace.

To be fair, the finale did take a step back when it came to the Conrad hate (I seem to be the only one who appreciated that Ruby showed him mercy instead of tearing into him). But that is about all that can be said for it. Ncuti Gatwa regenerating into Billie Piper (who played companion Rose Tyler in RTD's first era) was a tired stunt that had even me groaning, and I have a high tolerance for fan service. But to tell the truth, I was fed up long before then. I'm not sure what to do about Doctor Who in the future. I can't seriously be prepared to stop watching it, can I?

What do you mean, "don't take Eurovision too seriously"?

The Ascension Day holiday, usually a good time for blogging, will be a little busier than usual this year, so I'd better get my Eurovision post out of the way this week instead. The first question that suggests itself is: Am I upset that Sweden didn't win? Answer: Nope. Not even the littlest bit.

Now, don't get me wrong. The Finnish trio KAJ who represented Sweden this year are charming boys. Their number, which poked gentle fun at Swedish conceptions of Finns, has done wonders for relations between Sweden and Finland, and is very easy to hum. But it is a jokey song, designed to appeal to those who prefer Eurovision to be as wacky as possible. And I'm not one of them.

My daily newspaper was fond of proclaiming that it was about time Sweden sent something a little more light-hearted to the contest. According to Swedish journalists, Sweden had started to become unpopular by sending high-quality, earnest pop songs to Eurovision year after year, as if we cared about winning way too much. We needed to learn how to chill a bit more and not take the whole thing so seriously.

It's a point of view, I guess, but it's not mine. There's no denying Eurovision tends to be full of "out there" moments, and there are probably lots of fans who lean into the crazy and think that that's what it's all about. But for me, the Eurovision Song Contest is primarily just that – a song contest. You don't have to win it, certainly (though it's preferable to make the final, and not finish last among the finalists). But you should aim to send a good, solid song to represent your country. Jokes should be left to the host country's self-deprecating intermission number.

I mean, can you see the Norwegians sending skiers who clown about in the snow to the Ski World Championships, just to make everyone feel better because Norway usually tends to win? No, me neither, worse luck.

Basel did a stellar job of hosting this year, with hosts that actually had a matey chemistry and good timing in their delivery of a not-too-cringey script. As for the songs, here are some of the memorable moments:

Positive national stereotype of the year: Spain Maybe not the strongest on rewatch, but I had a weakness for the Flamenco (or something)-dancing Spanish diva, who ended her number reclining in a swoony pose in the capable arms of a brave background dancer (imagine if he'd dropped her). Spectacle, glamour, and pretty nice to listen to.

Aww-inducing act of the year: Italy "I don't have the face of a tough guy" – no, that you don't, sweetheart. These last years, Italy has shown a certain amount of street cred, and this year's entry, though not as rocky as, say, Måneskin, continued the trend. Lucio's clown makeup did make me feel as if a character from an old Swedish children's programme was having an existential crisis (to Swedish readers I need only say: banana), but the overall effect was that of a cute troubadour acquitting himself with credit.

Shameless filth of the year: Finland and Malta You're in trouble when a Finnish blonde riding an enormous microphone up to the sky while yelling "Ich komme" ("I come", in German for some reason, I mean ta very much but even so) isn't even the most tasteless thing Eurovision has to offer. Instead, that prize goes to Malta. Can you blame the EBU for demanding that the word "kant" (Maltese for "song", apparently) be removed from the song title? The number still leaves little to the imagination, with the singer entering through an open, heavily-lipsticked mouth, widely-spread female legs waving in the background, and dancers cavorting in the foreground. By the end, the singer is seated on a bouncing ball. I'd say it's pretty clear it's not song she's serving. But what are the gently rocking leopards doing there?

Nice singers, shame about the song of the year: United Kingdom It may seem I'm always picking on the poor old UK, but honestly, limeys, it's just because I love you and want you to do better. This time, we had three female pros from musical theatre. That's a good start – but what were they singing? Every time you thought the song was about to go somewhere, it inexplicably slowed down in a stop-go-stop-go manner. Not sophisticated, just weird.

Earworm of the year: Luxemburg Oh dear, are we still doing the "I'm not a puppet" cliché? Still, it has to be said, the refrain sticks in your brain very effectively.

I'm still avoiding those elephants, as you can see. Sorry about that.