Overview: The final

The final was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Generally the performances were good, or at least better than the second semi-final, but the atmosphere was a little... perfunctory. There were no real surprises, underscored of course by the predictable and completely unexciting voting (but more on that later).

To me the opening didn't work as well as it should, with Marija Šerifović coming across flat and somewhat detached from proceedings, possibly there more to bolster her ratings at home than for any other reason. Jovana Janković and Željko Joksimović did a decent enough job as hosts on all three nights, albeit without presenting much personality or anything to set them apart from any of the hosts over the last however many years.

Romania opened the show with a slightly improved performance (from Nico, and dress for that matter) over that in the semi-final, but the highlight of the first quarter of the show for me turned out to be Andy Abraham. At the end of the performance I still knew Even If was going nowhere, but it was the best from the UK in a long time. Meanwhile, Olta Boka was in tune but slightly off-key for the entire song, Germany was a disaster, and Armenia still wasn't any better. Bosnia, thankfully, was, mostly due to better camerawork.

Israel and Finland made a strong opening to the second quarter of the show, which perhaps rivalled the last six or so songs for the title of strongest of the night, with further good performances from Iceland, Turkey and Portugal. Poland was still effective but somewhat stretched, and I was surprised again by how unengaging Croatia was.

Back to back, Latvia and Sweden seemed to be battling one another to see who could come across as more plastic and contrived, but coming after them (and the stronger performances that preceded them) Denmark lost much of the charm that saw it do so well in the context of the semi-final. In this part of the final Ukraine put everything else to shame, with the performance really coming together when it mattered, and if the final had ended there Shady Lady would certainly have been the winner.

Unfortunately for Ani Lorak there were half a dozen or so songs left, and after the truly backfiring French act and the better but still OTT piece of Azeri theatre there came a string of good performances all the way to the end of the final only interrupted by Spain, which was just as bizarre and laboured as Divine and not nearly as funny as it should have been (and probably thought it was).

Buoyed by the more than passable level of most of the performances, I came back down to earth with a crash come the voting, with my sense of the final being somehow distant having been confirmed by the interminable interval act, which just didn't come across well on screen at all. The way the voting unfolded though took the biscuit; I fully expected it to be as skewed as last year's, but not even more obvious and predictable.

What made the voting such bad press for the contest was not necessarily only the 8s, 10s and 12s which anyone with a general knowledge of Eurovision could have guessed (I predicted 35 of the 43 top threes correctly and 40 of the 43 douzes!!), but the less tangible things like Azerbaijan and Armenia not giving each other any points, the UK picking up half of its tiny total of points from the San Marinese jury, and Bulgaria giving Germany 12 points just because one of No Angels has roots in the country.

All of these things combined go to show just how unrepresentative the voting actually is in Eurovision these days. I'm all for letting people vote for who they want to, but democracy for its own sake is not the answer, especially in a contest which still purports to be searching for the best song. I'm not saying Russia didn't deserve to win; that's not the issue. But the voting was so disappointingly dull that it really took the edge off the final for me.

In retrospect though I am happy that despite all this my four favourite songs this year - those from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Turkey, Norway and Israel - ended in the top ten, as musically and in terms of their performances I feel they all deserved to be there, even if at least two of them probably benefitted from the kind of voting that annoys me about the contest these days.

Looking ahead, well... Eurovision Russian-style should be an interesting experience! I'll reserve judgement for the time being, but my experience of Russians and Russian television in particular here in Estonia makes me wonder quite how it will turn out. As things stand I wonder whether I'll have it in me to repeat the blog experience of this year next time round, but I'm sure I'll be bitten by the bug again!

In the meantime I'll add posts every now and again just to keep things up and running. Feel free to comment as you like, and thanks to those who have expressed their appreciation for my efforts over the last couple of months. Hope you enjoyed it!