…some Americans might have taken an international format and against the odds not completely messed it up.

Sure, a little bit darker looking than the original, and indeed more serious, but not overly so. Exit, SyFy US, June 4th.

Here’s our feature on the Japanese original.

We’ll just repeat what we accidentally wrote last week:

Also Channel 4′s shuffled afternoon line-up begins  next Monday (oops), 1001 Things… at 12:40, Four Rooms at 2:10, Countdown 3:10. Looks like a big upgrade for Countdown although I suspect that half hour won’t actually make a huge difference – 400-450k maybe? The interesting figure is the one that 1001 Things… gets, because we toyed with the idea of Countdown moving to lunchtime, so it will be interesting to see if it pulls any audience there.

Only Connect is on tonight as well, map lovers against people from Wales.

Edit: Oooh it’s too exciting, apparently Tipping Point begins new episodes today, to little fanfare. Thanks comments peeps.

IN OTHER NEWS: The new Fifty 50 Show is out, Lewis Murphy and David Howell chat about Eurovision and stuff.

• Download directly!
• Show notes! (Also includes links to lower quality smaller files of this week’s show)
• Subscribe on iTunes!
• Subscribe on RSS!

Details here.

Eurovision! Loved the staging (noticed we had a March of the Athletes this year, #legacy2012) and loved Petra the host but this is actually the first year in ages I’ve not really felt the need to buy the official album, or indeed download a few individual tracks from it. It was a pleasant and largely inoffensive set of songs, but very little pushed my pop buttons. We enjoyed Romania and Norway at our house party last night, but whilst both had a good sound, personally I thought they lacked a killer tune. Interestingly one of my favourites was France’s opener, which was never going to get anywhere. Finland’s seemed to be what the British would think is a good Eurovision song but didn’t really have much killer about it, which then hilariously got no votes from us.

I’m completely baffled as to what everyone saw in the Danish winning entry, we’d have happily accepted pretty much any of the five or six next entries over it. It wasn’t a runaway winner in its semi either, Russia was only 11 votes behind it. Intriguingly we only gave Ireland 6 points in the semi (and only 1pt in the final!) proving that that British sense of fair play is alive and well, or something.

• Scorecard Semi 1
• Scorecard Semi 2
• Scorecard Final

So what next? We’re not one of those tediously earnest types who goes “I think you’ll find there’s no political voting in the Eurovision ACTually,” followed by “If only we put in someone who is internationally well known with a good song we’ll storm it! We could win it every year if we wanted to” when we put in Bonnie Tyler with a song that’s average at best and end up beating Cascada. There is, I have decided, no point trying to second guess the Eurovision Song Contest, other than we should try entering something a little bit poppier than we have done the last few years and enjoy the ride. It remains a good value proposition for the BBC.

That Eurovision anthem is never going to catch on.

Almost five million people watched it in the Netherlands last night, almost a third of all people in the country, and a 65% share of the TV watching viewership on the night. Germany and the UK both had around 8m watching it, but of the
Big Five France and Italy could only manage audiences of around 2m.

Online from 5pm UK time/noon Baltimore time

But the Eurovision Song Contest isn’t the only big event happening this weekend. This weekend in Baltimore, Christian Carrion, Bob Hagh and Cory Anotado will be spending 24 hours recreating classic (admittedly mainly US) gameshows for charity.

Last year this was quite good fun – I didn’t watch all of it but dipped in and out. They’re hoping to raise $5,000 for charity – the American Cancer Society and the Kennedy Krieger Institute so if you enjoy what you see then donate!

Here are all the links you need:

• Official Facebook page
• Official Live Stream
• And you can donate here.

Saturday, 8pm (UK),
BBC1 and Radio 2

It’s time for the UK to believe in Bonnie as the Eurovision Song Contest plays out for the 58th time live from Malmo in Sweden. How will the UK fare (badly probably)? And which country’s results returner’s use of humour will most backfire spectacularly? We’ve got Scott Mills doing ours so it won’t be too embarrassing. Probably.

I believe there might also be some sort of Fifty 50 Show live commentary thing going on – if it’s happening then all the details will be over there.

Join Graham Norton on BBC1 or Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2 for an evening of songs and inevitably hilarious voting. Bonnie Tyler is singing for the UK as the 15th song of the night. We only caught the last half an hour of the Thursday semi-final so all we know is that if nothing else the Swedes have put on some excellent tension music.

Links!

• Here is the BBC site!
• And here is a link to the official live stream from 8pm UK/9pm Europe – you won’t get the commentary, but you will get to see all the action if you’re outside the EBU.

“Regrettably” I’ll be watching this with chums tonight so won’t be around for it, but I look forward to reading your comments (if you choose to make any!) after. As I said previously, Twitter’s a much better place for this sort of fast moving ephmera these days so it’s no big deal, but if there’s anything you want people to know for posterity then go ahead.