“Where would you draw the line?” asked the trailers for BBC Two’s The Line of Beauty. Having watched the lacklustre first episode, I was tempted to draw it there. No, I thought, I’ll give it another chance – maybe it’ll get going in the second episode – and, fair enough, the second part was a little better, but still pretty naff. (I was doing my best to watch the last half hour while also listening with one ear to James Graham on the radio – more on that story later – but I don’t think I missed anything.)

I haven’t read the book (not really my sort of thing), but I understand that much of its success is down to Alan Hollinghurst’s use of language rather than the plot. This would certainly be supported by Andrew Davies’s adaptation which, although peppered with incident, lacks any real interest. The few plot twists present are so heavily signposted that nothing comes as a surprise. That the MP is having an affair with his PA is telegraphed earlier in the episode; that Leo would get bad AIDS is foreshadowed explicitly by (the rather good) Floella Benjamin in episode one. Oh, and you can tell who has AIDS in The Line of Beauty because they cough.

The story presents little insight into the 1980s. We learn that some Tory MPs were racist, some Tory MPs were homophobic, that some gay men had promiscuous sex (and some caught AIDS), and that yuppies took cocaine (a line of beauty – geddit?). It’s hardly ground-breaking stuff, is it? Stephen Tall – who has been enjoying the series and can offer an alternative view – flags up the episode’s one fun scene, where the main character, Nick, dances with the PM. (Presumably the decision was taken not to make any effort to impersonate Mrs T – you wouldn’t recognise her unless you knew.) Also on the plus side, Barbara Flynn was in it, and I did at least learn something: an ogee is an arc shape. (The character’s pretentious and self-deluding attempt to launch a magazine of this name reminded me off the guy who (successfully) pitched a pompous style mag on Dragon’s Den.)

I may as well watch the final episode now that I’ve seen the first two. Presumably we will learn that for all money and leisure time that the various characters have, everyone will end up unhappy thanks to marital infidelity, drug abuse and unprotected sex – and thus, the 1980s weren’t as great as the first episode made out. Aaaah, do you see what they did? I could be wrong, of course – if everyone lives happily ever after, that will be an unexpected twist.

I listen to about half an hour of Today as I’m getting ready each morning. Occasionally, as yesterday morning, I end up shouting at the radio. In this case, it followed a report on whether or not Nottingham is the crime capital of the UK.

After some discussion about the statistics and where towns figured in the crime table*, John Humphrys asked (from memory): “But the Government say that crime is going down, don’t they?” What did that have to do with anything, I demanded from the stereo. The relative levels of crime in different places in a snapshot of time bears no relation at all to the change of crime frequency over time. The fact that you can produce a report calculating likelihood of being a victim of crime in different geographic locations says absolutely nothing at all about the overall crime rate apart from that there is some crime. Grr.

*The word “table” appears to be the 100,000th word on this blog. Woo.

I’m not liveblogging Eurovision – better make that clear. However, I have to mention:

• Switzerland were first up and their multi-national soppy horror If We All Give A Little was as lyrically twee as I thought the first time I heard it. Yuck. If they wanted my vote, they obviously didn’t realise that Give A Little Bit is my least favourite Supertramp song.
• Moldova’s seems to be a bit of a nonsense song and really doesn’t benefit from the rapping.
• Israel’s song is utterly inoffensive, although it does do that annoying thing of featuring lyrics in the native language as well as English. Oh, and it’s dull.

Right, that’s enough of that. I can’t enjoy it properly if I’m blogging 🙂

Update: Lithuania continue to take the mick with their catchy chant – and got booed; the UK’s performance was very good; and Greece’s song turns out to be much better than I remember.

T’other update: Well, that was actually a reasonably credible array of songs. Sweden and Ukraine were better than I expected, and Romania and Armenia were also notable. I’m secretly hoping that Finland will win but it’s wide open as I watch dancers dressed as Orville in the slightly surreal interval act…

Final update: Finland it is! Helsinki next year. You can compare the final results with Mike’s predictions and also read his pretty spot-on reviews of the various tracks. The final score table will no doubt shortly be up on the Eurovision website.

Gosh, some campaign group just crashed the lottery live on BBC1!

Anyway, what was I about to say? Ah yes: Alex and Simon having previously written extra scenes for Who episodes, I couldn’t help myself. Apologies for the tastelessness…

Short Trips

Mickey approaches the front door and knocks. There is no answer. He knocks again before trying the handle. The door opens and he moves inside.

MICKEY: Gran?

Mickey stops in horror as he sees Ricky’s grandmother sprawled unmoving at the bottom of the stairs.

MICKEY: Bugger.