Super Troupers - Ask Ian's Opinionated Opinion ®

So, that was that. Not such a bad piece of television really. It was entertaining I guess. I was watching trying not to pick it apart too much, and I think I succeeded. Though Pete Waterman said a couple of really quite stupid, unnecessary things, and was pretty crap as a narrator - at least he was enthusiastic about the subject though. And what was with the extra added screaming and general audience noise overdubbed onto every single live performance seen (as if there wasn't enough noise already overdubbed in the first place?). At times it all but drowned out the music!

If you wanted to learn the story of ABBA, this wasn't the programme to teach you. A few historical facts here and there, but nothing much in context, aside from People Need Love. Despite the claims of "new" interviews, it seemed that most of the interview bits shown (or heard) were from The Winner Takes It All in 1999. However, some of it was stuff that wasn't used then - quite a lot actually I think, including a couple of passages of Agnetha reading from her children's book... I mean authorised autobiography. The backstage stuff at Mamma Mia! was cute and interesting, but it didn't seem particularly revelatory to me, or look like Frida was itching to get on stage or anything. Spotted ABBAMAILers Paul Carter and Mark Hannam in the crowd outside.

Personally, I found the cutting between different eras' footage rather jarring (e.g. cutting between Frida backstage at Brighton April 74 and at Mamma Mia! April 04) - if I didn't know all the footage so well, I would have been pretty confused at what the fuck was going on!

Sara was right. Stig was not mentioned at all :-(

All in all, not bad, but not good. It's just such a shame that (1) they couldn't fact check, and (2) forever more, the "official" ABBA story will be wrapped around Mamma fucking Mia!

ABBA Re-Björn

Or ABBA Re-Born as Idiot Meldrum kept saying, completely destroying the point of having such a punning title (or was that his comment on the fact that it's a pretty stupid pun?). The "special" was even less than I was expecting - the same old babble from Molly, who should never have been in front of a camera *ever*. The songs seen were simply the clips from The Definitive Collection DVD, and then, we only got about 2 minutes of each (guess that explains why the producer told Luke that the clips were "digitally remastered" - at least they were from Def Col v2). A couple of bits recycled from the original 1994 special, with one rather eerie premonition - Stephan Elliot (director of Priscilla) commenting that it will take 10 years for Benny and Björn to be recognised as among the greatest composers of the 20th century (or something like that), which indeed happened in Q magazine in the UK just in the last month or so. Spooky!

At least Stig got a mention, and a brief snippet of a 1976 interview. And there was a bit more actual ABBA history than in Super Troupers.

If nothing else, tonight might shift a few more copies of The Definitive Collections or The Last Video... Though surprisingly, there were no ads for any ABBA product during the evening, just the competition to win DVDs and CDs in Re-Björn, and an additional plug for The Last Video DVD when it was shown in full at the end.

Ian Cole Sydney, New South Wales, Australia