Eurobeat: Almost Eurovision

Published Monday 20 August 2007 at 11:55 by Duska Radosavljevic

In theory, this kind of a show makes you wonder why no one else has thought of it before.

In practice, you might wish they hadn’t. Despite its rave reviews so far, this is nothing different to what you might expect from the title: scene after scene of plain old tackiness and kitsch, just like the real thing - including a video link from Terry Wogan - only worse.

The makers of this show have set their competition in Sarajevo and they have only ten competitors, which the present audience will be given an opportunity to vote for. Everyone has a lot of fun, clapping along, cheering for one country or another and guffawing at flashy one-liners on account of cultural differences and national egos.

Truth be told, on this particular occasion the show has a rare misfortune of being reviewed by a continental European (and from the Balkans, no less), unable to fully appreciate the finer cultural ironies of this entire enterprise. I also wished there was more of a narrative element to the roll call of pop songs, although I do agree that the essential idea is a good one and should indeed be marketed eastwards.

Especially considering that, rather suitably, the whole idea of voting seems to be a sham too, designed to extract your contact details for marketing purposes.