TV Review: 'There's a certain gargantuan quality about this thing," said ex-hobbit Dominic Monaghan, who plays Charlie, the druggy Brit survivor of the most expensive air crash in television history. Lost, the hugely successful, wildly implausible, and much-hyped American survival drama, has jetted across the Atlantic and spiralled on to our tellies.
At its start, an aircraft en route from Australia experiences radio problems and turns back in an attempt to land at Fiji (the pilot, in his haste, omitting to tell the passengers); it then hits a particularly nasty bit of turbulence and tosses its tail section into the ether like an unwanted gum-wrapper, before crashing, 1,000 miles off course, on to the shore of an island. From the charred body of the stricken aircraft emerge 48 of the best-manicured, most thoroughly depilated bunch of survivors you could ever hope to meet, clutching their hair-straighteners. "Seventeen million Americans can't be wrong," the announcer told us at the start of Monday's double-bill, but let's not even go there.
Lost is as appetising and original as a couple of microwavable meatballs, comfortingly formulaic, and slick as an oil spill; however, it can leave you wanting more. Stock characters include Jack, a portentous hero and surgeon (handily), and the crisply enigmatic Kate in her bikini briefs (remember your mother telling you to change your underwear in case you got knocked down? Well, Kate heeded the advice), and Sayid, a former Republican Guard and Gulf War veteran who's pretty handy with radio transmitters.
Presumably, before boarding, these characters had to pay a surcharge for their weighty back-stories, with most of the goodies also having baddie habits: drink, crime, heroin addiction. And then there are the elements: the island seems to be populated by some supernatural force that can do nasty things with vines. Horticultural anomalies pale into insignificance, however, compared with Willow, the spoilt blonde who gave herself a pedicure about five minutes after impact.
Lost, despite some clunky dialogue ("I'm a complex guy, sweetheart," says nasty man Sawyer to Kate, brandishing his pistol as a polar bear rushes past banana trees to eat them - the survivors, that is, not the bananas), is fun and, if you're not planning on flying anywhere too soon, worth a look. The crash sequence was energetic, and oxygen masks will never look so reassuring again, having seen them dangle over terrified, mid-scream faces rather than the pertly optimistic noses of the flight crew.
Still, it's nice to know that if you do end up on a seemingly deserted island in the middle of nowhere and satellite navigation (which is supposed to be able to find a fly on a picnic table) lets you down, it seemingly has the equivalent emotional impact of your taxi not turning up on time. You can, like the eight-months-pregnant Claire (why was she let on the plane?), settle yourself down in a dislodged aircraft seat, chew your voluptuous curls and fill in your diary while waiting for the rescue boat: Monday, remember to buy flight insurance . . .
THERE WAS ONE spooky moment in Lost when the survivors picked up a radio signal of a woman sending out distress signals from the island . . . for more than 16 years. It's okay, though, we know who she is now. Abba: Behind the Blonde examined the curious life of Agnetha Faltskog, the blonde with "the great big Swedish behind", as she was described by her bitter ex, American record producer Bruce Gaitsch.
Faltskog has been living in relative isolation on the island of Ekerö, near Stockholm, for 17 years, and given some of the press she has endured, a very public marriage and divorce, and a life spent as a quarter of her country's most famous pop band, one really couldn't blame her.
Faltskog, whose wholesomely beautiful features made her an icon of the 1970s and early 1980s is, according to this particular kiss'n'tell, prone to bouts of depression. Throughout her marriage to fellow band member Björn Ulvaeus, the Eurovision win in 1974 and Abba's phenomenal international success, she was battling fears and phobias. Having skidded over her early life and flicked through her hand of ex-lovers after Ulvaeus (her bodyguard and her shrink included), the documentary focused on Dutchman Gert van der Graaf, whose extraordinary obsessive love led him to stalk Faltskog and then, bizarrely, to become her lover.
"The first time I went to Sweden," van der Graaf confided, "was in my little car." Having reached his idol's home, he parked his little car in the snowy folds of Faltskog's estate and waited. It's difficult to describe van der Graaf without becoming offensive: he is, however, central-casting stalker material, an isolated fantasist, a self-aggrandising mushroom growing on the shady underbelly of popular culture.
After many failed attempts to grab Faltskog's attention, van der Graaf - who was now a neighbour, having bought a cabin near her home - was involved in a car crash. While recovering, he wrote one of his many hundreds of letters to her, describing his trauma. Faltskog had by this time suffered some further ordeals of her own: her mother had committed suicide, her father had died a year later, and Faltskog herself, terrified of flying, had been on the road promoting her solo album when her tour bus crashed, throwing her out of the vehicle and almost killing her. Perhaps van der Graaf's letter struck a chord, but for motives that will remain a mystery she decided to visit him. After years of waiting, van der Graaf heard a knock on his cabin door. When he opened it, it was, he said, "my boyhood dream come true".
Later that evening, astoundingly, he lost his virginity with his idol ("I thought she enjoyed it," he told us wanly). He went on to recall: "When we were recovering next to one another, we did remark on how we had found ourselves in this position." Mamma mia!
Faltskog, in an interview she gave last year, fragments of which were shown on the documentary, refused to illuminate any further the two-year relationship which then ensued with her stalker. And why should she? With some Swedish media reporting that van der Graaf's obsession had driven him to keep her faeces in plastic bags in his home, there is not much she can say.
Van der Graaf has now been deported from Sweden twice for harassing his former lover after she split up with him, but he still hopes she'll take a chance on him. As he stood surveying the windswept grimness of a local dyke, he told us: "I would drop everything to be with her. I've done it before."
There's nothing in the lexicon of Abba song titles that really covers this kind of material, but Faltskog is clearly one troubled super-trouper who deserves her privacy.
