ABBA: When All Is Said And Done review: A story 'too thin for a documentary'
THERE may be a medical term for it but I’m one of those people who can’t help mishearing song lyrics.
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For years I thought Michael Jackson’s Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground) was a homage to the Saudi politician, Sheikh Yamani.
Many have misunderstood the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay but I’m surely the only one who thought he was inviting her to “lay across my pig’s glass head.”
I did better with Swedish sensations Abba who, because they were doing all their rocking in another language, always spoke very clearly.
Long before I saw ABBA: When All Is Said And Done (Channel 5) I was aware that many of their lyrics spoke of the upset they were going through in their marriages.
It was interesting, too, to see a story told from the perspective of the women, and avoiding the chart success or artistic truth dilemmas you get in most pop biopics.
I’m not sure whether to call last night’s programme a documentary drama or a drama documentary.
It had a couple of people who had known and worked with the legendary band, talking candidly to the camera, interspersed with acted-out bits.
These were terrible, because they involved British actors, pretending to be Swedish, speaking English.
As decades of war films have proved, it’s never an easy decision to make.
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Do you have your Nazis and your Red Army soldiers speaking English with German and Russian accents?
Go down the dreaded subtitle route?
Try what the BBC did with the Wallander adaptations and have everyone speaking English like English people with bits of background detail reminding us that this is Sweden?
In the case of this Abba autopsy, I’d have thought the solution was easier.
Hire four Swedish actors, who would then, when speaking English, sound exactly like Swedish people speaking English.
Alternatively, not hire actors at all.
With one former saxophonist and one lady described as a “friend” doing their best to tell a story that the four band members obviously didn’t want telling, though, it would have been hard.
It was a shame, because there was a story here – and a good one.
Success seemed to have hit the four young Swedes so swiftly they barely had time to work out if it was what they wanted.
This was particularly true for Agnetha (played by Siobhan Hewlett and Jo-Anne Stockham), a talented singer, uncomfortable with fame, who hated flying and really just wanted a quiet family life.
It was interesting, too, to see a story told from the perspective of the women, and avoiding the chart success or artistic truth dilemmas you get in most pop biopics.
As many bands have struggled to be one thing or another, though, so did this band’s story – too thin for a documentary, too naff for drama.
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As part of the BBC’s Give Mary Berry Lots of Gigs So She Doesn’t Do A Paul Hollywood And Defect season, the Duchess of Dough was on again last night, hosting Mary Berry’s Christmas Party (BBC1).
However good the vol-auvents were, I’m not sure I’d dare go to a Christmas party at Mary’s.
I have a feeling I’d spill something or make an inappropriate joke and be told firmly but politely that my taxi had arrived.
I admired One Show presenter Alex Jones then, not just for going and arriving first but for making rissoles with corned beef and ketchup.
“I don’t think you can over-herb. Can you over-herb?” she declared.
“Yes you can,” said Mary, in a tone reminiscent of a lemon meringue – sweet and tart.
I’m not sure Alex will be receiving an invitation next year.
