Historical novels not set in Tudor or Victorian times

Although I've read quite a respectable number of books lately (if not nearly as many as I've bought), blogging about them is another matter. I confess that unless there is some book-related theme I'm burning to comment on, writing about geeky stuff is considerably easier. However, I realise that a book-themed blog post is well overdue.

Perhaps my lack of enthusiasm for book-blogging says something about the novels I've been reading. They've been good, sure, but they haven't made an overwhelming impression on me. I haven't discovered a new favourite author, but I've had a good time. Take The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola, a historical novel set in Paris in the 1750s. Once in a while, I like to read historical novels set in times and places I am less familiar with. For one thing, it's exciting not to know beforehand how things pan out, and you learn something new, even if you have to take anything you pick up from a historical novel with a pinch of salt. The 1750s is a period of French history I don't know much about, so I was interested in the setting from the start.

The plot concerns Madeleine, the scarred daughter of a brothel keeper, who is tasked with spying on a clockmaker called Reinhart and his household. He is considered for a position at court, but there are rumours about unnatural experiments, and the question is if he's quite safe to be let near the royal presence. Madeleine is reluctant to become a police spy, but the reward she is promised could help her and her beloved nephew escape life at the brothel. She becomes the maid of Reinhart's daughter Veronique, and the novel is told alternately from the points of view of Madeleine and Veronique, sometimes with a section told from the point of view of Jeanne (Madame de Pompadour, no less) thrown in.

It's an intriguing story, where the setup reminded me a little of Fingersmith without the lesbian romance – Veronique isn't quite as innocent as she seems. Although the novel focuses a great deal on female solidarity, the mystery that kept me hooked concerned Reinhart. I was happy to be kept guessing about him. Does he have sinister intentions or is he just a committed scientist? Does he care about his daughter or not? It's a well-spun yarn, and clearly well-researched. There's a lot of local colour – a little too much for my taste – and the descriptions are filtered through the characters' consciousness, which always adds interest.

The characters seemed less authentic than the settings to me, though. I frequently felt the presence of 21th-century tut-tutting. Wasn't it awful that there was such a divide between rich and poor? And that women's lives were so limited? And then there was slavery too! (Reinhart's footman Joseph is a former slave, the "former" very much depending on the goodwill of his master.) The female protagonists felt less like 18th-century women than modern women stuck in 18th-century lives and hating it. Even Madame de Pompadour, who's at the top of the tree, is full of gloom.

It's hard to justify why the protagonists' lamentations irritated me so much. Of course the poor resented the rich in the 18th century, and gifted women must often have wondered why they were prohibited from earning their own bread. Many people found slavery appalling, because it was appalling. Only, I think 18th-century people approached these questions from a different angle, and if they expressed similar sentiments to modern ones they did so in a different way. I would have enjoyed the novel more if it had either dialled down the commentary or made more of an effort to make it feel genuinely 18th-century.

Kate Atkinson wisely stays away from social commentary in Shrines of Gaiety, a novel set in London in 1926 which focuses on hard-bitten nightclub owner Nellie Coker and her large family. I wasn't a great fan of Atkinson's One Good Turn, which is the only other novel I've read by her, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the glamorous if potentially dangerous nightclub settings and the expert juggling of several plot threads and characters. There's no downright moralising, mercifully, more wry commenting which reminded me of Fay Weldon's "Love and Inheritance" trilogy.

The ending, though it could have been more tragic, still feels a little downbeat, and it is somehow typical that the author leaves an open ending for one potential romance (which leads me to assume that everything went swimmingly, as I suspect that Atkinson wouldn't have held back from telling us if it all went to pot). But all in all, I liked Shrines of Gaiety. If the Coker family saga had been further expanded upon, it would have made for a good costume drama series of, say, ten episodes. I mean that as praise, though I'm not sure it's the kind of praise Kate Atkinson would appreciate.

Not even the shapeshifting is fun in this Zygon – sorry, Skrull – invasion

At the beginning of the latest Marvel Disney + series Secret Invasion, I thought I'd have a hot take on it – while others called it "promising", I thought it was dull. At the end of the series, however, I'm far from the only one to be critical. 

The set-up of the series first. Nick Fury, the grizzled head of superhero-related intelligence, is called back to Earth from a mission in space. Back in the Nineties, he and Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel) promised to find a new planet for a fugitive alien species called Skrulls, whose most prominent feature is their ability to shapeshift. Thirty-odd years later, nothing has happened on the planet-finding front, and the Skrulls are getting restless. Some of them are beginning to wonder whether Earth wouldn't make a decent new home – once you get rid of all the pesky humans.

You could see how things could get interesting from such a premise. Now after the show has aired, however, there are far-from-glowing reviews all over containing observations with which I concur, such as:

- There's no in-universe reason for not calling in the Avengers. Nick Fury's insistence on handling the situation himself (with the help from a few friendly Skrulls), just because he wants to clean up what he considers to be his mess, looks dangerously pig-headed. The Earth's future is on the line here.

- The motivation of the villain, Skrull leader Gravik, makes no sense. I'd argue it's quite a leap from feeling angry with Fury to wanting to destroy the whole human race. Gravik isn't four years old. Why is he basically going "you promised, and now I'm gonna kill you all"? Plus his railing over the kills he did as Fury's secret agent rings hollow considering all the non-ordered murders he's done since, including some spectacularly stupid ones of his own kind.

- No-one's plan makes any sense. Not Gravik's, not Fury's, not Fury's best Skrull bud Talos's. Everyone's acting aimlessly and idiotically. This is a serious flaw in a thriller, which needs to be slick and smart.

- Why is it so hard to find a planet for the Skrulls? The MCU seems to be full of perfectly habitable planets. And what has Captain Marvel, who considered herself too fancy to help out in human affairs for decades, been doing with her time?

- Why is it so hard to integrate the Skrulls? Fury is appalled to learn that there were as many as a million of them originally. But even allowing for some population growth, that's not an awful lot compared to billions of humans. You could easily tuck all of Skrull-dom away in one admittedly large city somewhere, or spread them out. Even without a shape-shifting disguise they're not that scary-looking, and MCU humans have seen a lot of strange things by now.

- The series makes Fury look bad. He's supposed to be the classic Broken Hero who finds his mojo again – during the first episode, people are continually telling him he's past it – but he never quite does. He's also made to look caddish because he prefers his Skrull wife, Varra, to wear a (very attractive) human disguise, rather than be her green, ridgy, elf-eared and pointy-toothed self. My own main problem with this is that Varra's shapeshifting was her own idea; she purposefully sought out a woman she knew Fury would like the look of, who was conveniently dying, and asked her permission to take over her life. It's a bit much after that to ask to be loved "for yourself" years later.

- The last episode leaves one character ridiculously overpowered, and seeing as this character has previously been complicit is a mass-murder before seeing the error of their ways (kinda), it doesn't feel earned.

- And, yes, the series is actually pretty boring.

What can I add to all these (in my opinion) well-founded criticisms? A more personal disappointment for me was that the series failed to do something interesting with the whole shapeshifting concept. As someone who has been stagestruck since childhood, I've always been fascinated by the "acting" part of shapeshifting. To what extent do Skrulls who take over a human's appearance and tap into their memories also take over that human's personality? 

In one episode, we saw a Skrull give in to Fury when Fury threatened the son of the human the Skrull was impersonating. How come? It wasn't the Skrull's boy. That would have been worth diving into, but the series never does. Plus, I've always loved scenes where shapeshifters give themselves away by acting "out of character" and doing or saying something the person they're posing as would never do. But Secret Invasion doesn't deal with psychological "tells" at all; Skrulls are revealed in a much more hands-on manner.

Instead of shapeshifting-as-acting-drama, we get yet another clunky immigration metaphor. This was all the more irritating for me because it hit the same beats as the Doctor Who two-parter "The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion", which also featured shape-shifting aliens who had lost their planet. There, as here, there were plenty of peaceful aliens who only wanted to live a normal life. There, as here, a growing dissatisfaction with having to disguise themselves led to some aliens being "radicalised". There, as here, the human originals whom the aliens were impersonating were kept in pods and their memories mined in order to make the impersonations more believable. 

The Zygon two-parter is not a favourite of mine, but I must admit it explored the logistics of trying to integrate a shape-shifting species more thoroughly than Secret Invasion, and it did do more with the "human or alien" premise. But both "The Zygon Invasion/Inversion" and Secret Invasion lack something a shapeshifter story should have if I'm to enjoy it: a bit of fun.       

Pixar's Elemental: strong on romance, weak on allegory

I have similar feelings towards Elemental, Pixar's latest film, as many others (judging mainly from YouTube). On the strength of trailers and movie clips, I wasn't too eager to go to the cinema to watch it, and was tempted to wait until the Disney + release. When I did watch it at the cinema, however, I was pleasantly surprised and had a really good time.

Why wasn't I more excited for the film, then, as I could see from the trailers etc. that the animation would be stunning and colourful? The general impression of the Elemental's premise seems to be "haven't we seen this before?". A world with humanised elements doesn't come across as very innovative from a studio that has already given us humanised toys, bugs, monsters, fish, emotions and more. What bothered me more than a certain staleness in the Pixar formula, though, was the staleness of the themes addressed. Were we really getting "let's overcome prejudice" and generational conflict? Again?

I've seen the "let's overcome prejudice" theme in animated films and elsewhere many, many times. Zootopia (or Zootropolis in Europe, but as I don't know why the title was changed I'll stick to the original one) is the most high-profiled example among the animated flicks, and to be fair I thought it handled the subject matter rather cleverly. More recently, we've had Raya and the Last Dragon and Luca, and apparently Trolls World Tour from Dreamworks (which I haven't seen) tackled the same issues. It's especially popular to use allegories when trying to put the anti-prejudice message across, and while I can appreciate the good intentions behind them, I feel as if I see another clunky metaphor for immigration (looking at you, Marvel's Secret Invasion) I shall scream. I've already expanded on why I especially dislike allegories where humans are the discriminators and the discriminated against are another species of some kind. At least Elemental doesn't go down that road, but still: this has been done.

Generational conflict is the latest favourite topic of animated Disney films, and it sometimes crops up in Pixar too. I'm getting pretty tired of this as well, especially as generational-conflict films tend to be short on villains. Encanto, Strange World, Turning Red and now Elemental all have the younger generation questioning and/or wanting to break free from the older one, and zero villains.

But enough whining (for now). In spite of my misgivings, I very much enjoyed Elemental, which luckily isn't just Zootopia all over again. What I especially liked about the film was the romance. Here we have two protagonists – the prickly fire girl Ember and the somewhat mushy but endearing water guy Wade – unapologetically falling for each other in a classic romcom scenario. When's the last time we got that in an animated film? Seems like ages. And it's not just one of the characters doing all the running, either. Ember and Wade see the point of each other and complement each other: she appreciates his ability to connect to others, he admires her spark and can-do approach. It's really sweet.

The other main story thread, about Ember's parents' experiences as immigrants to "Element City" and how they affect Ember, has its moments too, though for my part I was more into the love story. Ember's sudden realisation that she doesn't really want to take over her father's shop felt as if it surfaced a bit abruptly after we've seen her repeatedly trying to prove to her dad that she's ready to take over. But maybe that's the point: she feels so guilty about not really enjoying shop work that she's suppressed her ambitions.

The main problem with Elemental is that the allegory of elements living together in one city doesn't serve either of these plot threads. Yes, it's visually impressive, and has inspired the animators to a lot of creative character and city designs. But it doesn't really work. However romantic the scene is where Ember and Wade finally dare to touch and manage to do so without destroying each other, you can't help wondering what will happen when they get even more tactile, plus if and how they'll manage to have children. 

As for the immigrant story, its personal approach is both a strength and a weakness. Unlike Zootopia, Elemental isn't about bringing harmony to a whole society; it's just about Ember trying to have a relationship and find a career that fits her talents without upsetting her parents. This makes the film more engaging and less finger-wagging than if it had gone further down the social commentary route. On the other hand, it can't use the same gambit as Zootopia, where there were no one-to-one parallels between different animals in the film and different groups of people in the real world, which lead to more general and less infected musings on the nature of prejudice. But in Elemental, the fire people are immigrants; they've already been established as such within the story. However, the physical danger that water poses to fire, and fire to everything else, has no equivalent in the real world. Elements really don't mix, but humans can. 

I don't think Element City is meant to be a one-to-one parallel to, say, New York (what would that imply about the air and earth people – that there are some immigrants who've had it easy?), but with some real-world parallels being so explicit, Elemental falls between two chairs when it comes to its world building.

Quibbles aside, Elemental is a heartwarming love story and sometimes touching family drama which is beautifully animated. It's definitely worth watching in a cinema. But Pixar does need to look out. In a film like Inside Out, they were really committed to the idea of animating a girl's emotional development by making her emotions into characters of their own. They had fun with the concept, whereas in Elemental, the animated elements are mostly a way to dress up a story that might as well have been told as a live-action romcom featuring humans. If the story and concept don't gel, then maybe one of them has to go.

Filling a Downton-shaped hole: Sanditon series three

Yep, I'm late with my blogging, which should really have taken place last week. My excuses are pre-vacation stress and a complete lack of inspiration. But now the vacation has started, and I have a given subject after having watched the whole series three of Sanditon.

Admittedly, there's not much scope for in-depth analysis (which suits me fine, to be honest), as this remained an enjoyable soufflé of a show throughout. The main difference to series one and two was that this time around, we got a satisfying ending. Series three was the final one, and its creators knew it, so they tied everything up in a pretty bow, something critics hate but viewers like myself love. Much as I've tried to see the point of "dynamic" endings that are more like "real life", few things beat a conclusion to a story which clearly signals that everything will be all right.

And that's not the only thing this show succeeded with. I have an impression, too, that it was popular. In (admittedly anglophile) Sweden it was aired on our main channel in a prime-time Saturday slot, and a common line in conversations with other costume-drama lovers became "you've seen Sanditon, of course". Yanks seemed to have loved it as well. Also, the fact that the show was saved from cancellation and then got two more series demonstrates that it must have done something right.

So, what is its appeal? After all, there is plenty to criticise. It's unashamedly shallow, making Downton Abbey look like Dostoyevsky in comparison, and the characters' mind-set feels more modern than Regency. Charlotte's proto-feminism and "follow your heart" rhetoric, and the respectful way it's received by her swains as priceless pearls of wisdom, strain credibility. Marriages of convenience were very much a way of life, and Georgiana's mother, for instance, would not have any reason to be shocked to learn that her daughter wasn't head over ears in love with her fiancé. Arthur Parker refuses to live in a ménage à trois with Georgiana and said fiancé because he would rather "live alone than live a lie". Well, those are exactly his options. If a gay man in Regency England wanted to get any at all, he had to "live a lie". And a Duke was expected to marry and produce heirs, whatever his inclinations. While I could buy why Arthur was upset that his Harry chose to become engaged to Georgiana of all people, I did wonder what exactly he thought would happen.

But for all the clichés, not to mention the unnecessarily drawn-out romance of Charlotte herself and its idiotic misunderstandings, Sanditon was never dull. The acting was consistently good; the actors played every scene, however melodramatic, perfectly straight. The characters were likeable. While much of the story was predictable, there were a couple of surprises and nice details: the unenlightened judge who nevertheless sees himself obliged to judge Georgiana's case fairly; some nuance added to the rakish Sir Edward's character which kept you guessing whether he was serious about Augusta or not; the vicar's realisation that he disapproves of his sister's autumnal romance with Dr Fuchs, not because Fuchs is too sciency but because he (the vicar) doesn't want to live alone; Harry's mother being perfectly aware of and unfazed by his preferences, but anxious that he should escape the gallows (and preferably secure the family's future by doing so) – these were plot points you couldn't necessarily see coming, and were welcome because of it. 

I should also mention that Arthur's rejection of the ménage à trois plan (which sounded pretty good to me, if Georgiana hadn't had a better suitor waiting in the wings) was given some credibility by his fondness for both Harry and Georgiana. He wasn't just thinking of himself; he was convinced that two people he loved would be unhappy together and didn't want to witness it. Arthur's and Georgiana's friendship was a sweet detail throughout the series, which I thought added to their respective character.

Also, while highlighting the good points of series three, Colbourne's lawyer brother turned out to be hot (and better at shaving than his bro), so there's that.

So, to circle back: why does Sanditon work? One important factor, I believe, is that we've missed series like this. That's why I mention Downton in the headline, though Downton in my opinion is a superior show. The point I'm trying to make is that long-running period dramas that focus heavily on relationships, with a sizeable cast and room for plenty of twists and turns and parallel plots, have a large and faithful fanbase which TV producers should perhaps be more mindful of. There's a reason why Downton, Upstairs Downstairs and, in its day, The Forsyte Saga became such big hits. This is why I hope The Gilded Age will eventually become a bigger thing and fill the void. And maybe ITV should give Beecham House another chance?

Finally, we can expect a new Disney villain – but then what?

"That's just bad storytelling!"

This reaction to the lack of "bad guys" in a game was one of the few worthwhile lines in Strange World, last year's Disney animation offering. I didn't care for the film, for slightly ignoble reasons. 

I could claim that it was because of the bland characters, the unengaging generational conflict which compares very poorly to similar themes in Encanto, the unflattering character design which favours mushroomy noses and small eyes or the sometimes yawn-inducing story. But to tell the truth, what really annoyed me was the eco message, which I knew was coming in one form or another throughout the film. When it was delivered, it was in a different way than I expected, but the moral conveyed still boils down to the same: that we should abandon our modern, comfortable way of life to Save Mother Earth. The "get back in the caves" message always acts a red flag on me. If we'd been spared that, I think I could have forgiven the film much, even the three-legged dog (what demographic is he supposed to appeal to, exactly?).

But, to get back to the quote above from the disreputable adventurer grandfather we're not supposed to root for. (Nor did I: if anyone had my sympathy, it was the farmer dad, especially as his son was such a whiny, ungrateful brat.) When the old reprobate is right, he's right, and he was right here. As per usual, however, his views and those the film wished to pitch didn't match; there's no villain in Strange World. Nor is this a new thing in Disney animation.

Somehow, Disney managed to go from the played-out twist villain trope to no villain at all in several films in a row. Moana's head villain turned out to be something else, though it did still have the crab Tamatoa and his catchy villain song. The only antagonist in Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks The Internet was a computer virus created by mistake by Ralph and his insecurities. In Frozen 2, the villain was Elsa's and Anna's long-dead grandfather, shown briefly in snow-statue flashbacks, which hardly counts. In Raya and the Last Dragon, the threat was the Druun, a faceless, impersonal plague. No villain in Encanto – though the villain-song style of "We Don't Talk About Bruno" could be a part of the song's success (however, Bruno turns out to be a sweetie). And now Strange World, where the only villains are Ourselves. After all that, I'd begun to despair of ever seeing a memorable bad guy in a Disney film again. For some reason I couldn't quite understand, villains didn't seem to be fashionable. 

And, then, suddenly, a new hope. Disney's animated film of 2023 is set to be Wish, and the trailer features: a villainous king! Voiced by Chris Pine in honour of the good old heartthrob-turns-villain-actor tradition, King Magnifico (subtle) is a good-looking, seemingly popular monarch who promises good times for everyone as long as they "give your wish... to me". Whereupon his eyes turn menacingly yellow, and we hear a sinister laugh echoing in the trailer's background.

Oh boy oh boy, as Mickey himself would say, how I've missed this. I'm a little nervous that Wish will try to accomplish too much, cramming in callbacks to previous Disney films and a lot of side characters. But for Magnifico, the bar isn't set very high. The very fact that he exists pretty much gets him over it. I'm quite happy to give one of my wishes – to once again set my eyes on a front-and-centre, larger-than-life Disney villain –  to him for safekeeping.

Does this mean that Disney animation is on the right track again? Not really. After having once again swapped producers, Disney animation has announced that its new projects will be: Frozen 3, Zootopia 2 and, for Pixar, Toy Story 5. Yes, the sequel avalanche is upon us again. One thing one can say about Disney's animated output these last years, villain-less as it has been, it has featured several new stories which didn't build on already existing franchises. Look, you don't need me to tell you how uninspiring these new titles are. Toy Story 5, really?

As for villains, things look bleak. But hey, I could be wrong. It's not as if the original Frozen and Zootopia didn't have worlds worth revisiting. Maybe Frozen 3 will forgo the nature-vs-civilisation rhetoric of the second installment and dive more deeply into Scandinavian folklore and fairy tales instead? And maybe we get to see Hans again?

Zhivago adaptations (no, the balalaika is not in the book)

This is a bit of a "duty post", to be honest: when I'd read Doctor Zhivago and blogged about it, I mentioned an interest in watching adaptations of the book, partly to see how they'd manage to tell a compelling story with such non-plot-driven source material. I have now watched both the classic film and the TV series, penned by Andrew Davies when the millenium was young and he was at the peak of his adaptation career. So I guess I should write about them.

I had a better time than this grudging introduction makes it sound. As I expected, the film turned out to be the more enjoyable viewing experience, while the TV series was more faithful to the book. But, somewhat unexpectedly, the TV version wasn't as faithful as all that, and it's really easy to be closer to the source material than the film.

Because the film takes great liberties indeed. What was most remarkable wasn't what it cut out – of course, a whole array of side characters who didn't contribute much to the story had to go – but what it added. There are grand set-piece scenes that aren't in the novel at all, such as when a group of deserters confront a new batch of soldiers on their way to the front. The whole framing device, with Zhivago's half-brother telling the story to the newly-found daughter of Zhivago and Lara many years later, is invented. Yes, there is a half-brother in the novel, and a love child, and in the epilogue it's hinted that the former will take care of the latter, but we never actually see them meet.

So the narrative monologues of Alec Guinness were all the script-writer, not Pasternak. Which brings me to a feature which really stood out to me: how good the script was, not least the unheard-of-in-the-novel material. All of Komorovsky's enjoyable cynical zingers, for instance? Not in the book. Add to this the sterling acting from the star-studded cast, and it must be said I hugely preferred watching the film to reading the book. The balalaika may possibly have been a step too far on the soupiness scale, though.

The first hour or so of the TV version, I seriously wondered why Andrew Davies had bothered. I had expected it to be closer to the book from the get-go than the film was, but no, not really. The same narrative short-cuts are taken as in the film: young Yuri is taken in immediately by the Gromekos after his parents' death, thus cutting out boring uncle Nikolai completely; Pasha is caught up in a demonstration where soldiers mow down civilians as a young man, not as a boy; and Lara gets hold of his gun in the process (in the novel, the gun belongs to Lara's brother, not present in either adaptation and no great loss). 

What's more, the TV series takes liberties of its own: it starts with Yuri's father's funeral, not his mother's, and Yuri is supposed to have been present on the train when his father kills himself (in the novel, it was his friend Misha). While Zhivago in the novel was clearly very fond of his mother and didn't really have any relationship with his father, in the TV series, the roles are somewhat inexplicably reversed.

So to start with, the TV series tells roughly the same story as the film less enjoyably. The scenes between Lara and Komarovsky are so drawn out that even I, who will mostly find excuses for all manner of "problematic" erotic power play in fiction, felt uncomfortable. It didn't help that Keira Knightley, undeniably pretty and good in more lively roles, is the wrong type for Lara, especially compared with the smouldering Julie Christie. As the lout in Notting Hill would say: "she's too 'olesome".

The series did pick up after a while, though, and tackled some of the bleaker aspects of the novel, which was gutsy. Lara's husband Pasha was much closer to Pasha in the novel, which I liked; instead of the priggish revolutionary of the film, we see the naïve and good-natured young man who only later becomes implacable, by way of his experiences and disappointments. I appreciated, too, that his final scene with Zhivago was included. Tonya was lovely in both adaptations, and in the Davies version she is allowed to voice some resentment in a conversation with Lara.

You can see how Pasternak's habit of letting his characters drift in and out of the narrative has proved challenging for both adaptations. That Zhivago's half-brother should play such a large part in the film and not be included in the TV series, and that both creative decisions make sense, is an example. Just to make them a little more important to the plot, existing characters are often partly reworked and repurposed: in the TV series, Misha (not included in the film) nourishes an unrequited love for Tonya; in the film, the prison labourer Kostoed (not included the TV series) becomes a colourful figure played by Klaus Kinski. As I mentioned, both adaptations cut out Zhivago's uncle, of whom Zhivago is very fond. But he doesn't really do anything, so out he goes.

To sum up, if you haven't read the novel, I'd say watching the film is quite enough; it does keep the most interesting part of the story (the romance) and is a good watch in its own right. If you have read the novel and are curious to see what a more faithful adaptation looks like, then the TV series could be worth a try. Be prepared for sudden departures from the original story even in the TV version, though. For instance, Davies provides Zhivago and Lara with a son (who for dramatic purposes looks just like his dad). Here, the film was closer to the novel: it was a daughter.

Eurovision time – the good, the bad and the loony

It's time for traditional Eurovision blogging – there's no excuse not to, seeing as Sweden actually won this year! I'm pleased, of course. Loreen's number is a little arty for me and not such a favourite as, say, Måns and his "Heroes". But my, can she belt, and she gave the song her all. A deserved win, in my entirely unbiased opinion. Don't ask me to explain the Struwwelpeter nails, though, because I can't.

Here are some other high- and lowlights from this year's competition:

Melodious hunk of the year: Cyprus The half-Australian singer's super-hero physique was enough to provoke a villain-lover like myself: it's guys like this who are usually in for a good Force choke (or similar) from baddies admired by me. But he was a joy to listen to, with a surprising mastery of high notes. Got a vote from me, not that it made much difference to the statistics.

Frank confession of the year: Switzerland "I don't want to be a soldier, soldier/I don't want to fight with real guns" – well, that's a perfectly valid reason to prefer peace to war, though not often brought up in a Eurovision context, where one typically concentrates on everyone getting along and children holding hands while doves fly overhead. I wasn't expecting downright pacifism to go down very well this year, and maybe this is why the fresh-faced Swiss only climbed to the middle of the field voting-wise, in spite of a sweet voice and professional handling of the classic tonal change. I liked it. Clearly, this boy is better singing than fighting material.

Positive national stereotype of the year (again!): France The French chanson "Voilà" did well back in 2021, and now we get more of the same, with no complaints from me. This chanteuse is so typically French you could easily drop her in a soupy mini-series set in World War Two Paris, where she is entertaining the occupying forces while secretly working for the Resistance, right under the nose of the smitten Obersturmbannführer. Can't you just see his monocled aide-de-camp pointing a gun at her while hissing :"I knew you weren't to be trusted, you slut"? Anyway, I'm getting a bit carried away now. Good song.

Slurred, catchy ditty of the year: Norway This is the song that will be stuck in your head a month from now. While it's probably meant to invoke a rider on a white horse clip-clopping through the majestic landscape of Old Dragonia/New Zealand (judging by the singer's fantasy-warrior-queen getup), it reminded me of a sea shanty, and I'm partial to shanties. The diction was far from clear, though, and the girl-power message pretty basic.

WTF numbers of the year that made the rest look good: Croatia and Finland I nearly included the surreal Serbian number as well, but at least it was seriously meant. What can you say about Croatia? Guys in their underwear and makeup chanting something something dictator bad tractor something, is that what counts as satire nowadays? And what's with the Hercule Poirot moustache, what did I miss? As for that Finland guy, he's got a nerve being miffed (allegedly) because he didn't win. I have no idea why he got to the final with his drunken party song, let alone made second place.

What I've realised by now, though, is that these crazy numbers serve their purpose in Eurovision. There have been years that were overstuffed with competent ballads, which made me less appreciative of how well they were sung as I was too bored. This year, out-there numbers I didn't see the point of made me like the Baltic ballads from Estonia and Lithuania more, although they weren't the most exciting songs on offer.

Wasted opportunity of the year: United Kingdom OK, I can see why the Brits would feel despondent towards Eurovision by now. There have been quite a few times since I last speculated on their lack of success where they have sent good, solid pop tunes and still scored a negligible number of points. But they did do well last year, and this year they hosted the whole show on behalf of the winner Ukraine. 

Positives first. The show was amazing (as jury representatives like to point out). Ukraine was let in on the action in the form of co-host Julia Sanina and several song and dance numbers, and British actress Hannah Waddingham (whom I've seen on stage as the Lady of the Lake in Spamalot) was a hoot. I think it's safe to say that UK:s goodwill was built up to a respectable level.

But then came their song, and it was the kind of slapdash, half-ironic number which has served them so poorly in the past. The light show in the background consisted of the singer making quirky faces. What's more, the lyrics weren't very clearly sung, so the advantage of having English as your first language was missed. It's not the worst thing the UK has sent and probably didn't deserve to come second to last, but the Brits should know by now: please don't try kooky irony in Eurovision.

Well, better luck next time. I really want the UK to do better, as I think that would make them more favourably disposed towards the rest of Europe. Not to mention that I want Germany to send a crowd-pleaser next year and, for the first time in forever, not come last. But for now, I'm just happy Sweden won.