There are so many stories to be told on TV. BAFANA KHUMALO looks one of the latest attempts – Flat 27
In the past a lot of us used to talk about the post-apartheid society, a society where – among other things – we would be able to tell our own stories. This would be the time when we would not have to be spoon-fed American garbage hour after hour.
Well, that time has arrived and a lot of us are realising that telling those stories is not as easy as glibly rolling that manifesto off our tongues. Flat 27 on SABC1 is one such story that is proving difficult to tell on the telly.
Set in a flat, this a story that, on paper, is so delicious we salivated when it was sold to the press; we could not wait for it to hit the air waves. The flatmates in Flat 27 have the potential of being the most entertaining people on television – a crazy mixture ranging from a returnee with a very British working class accent, to a township thug who seems to be constantly high on something artificial.
In this mixture there is a black intellectual type who goes by the name IQ. This could be the setting for hilarious exchanges and sadly it does not work out this way. There is something missing. One sometimes sits and thinks, “Did they think that that was funny?”
Maybe the major problem with the series is that it is something slightly different from the genre that we are educated in, that is the American situation comedy. It doesn’t have a laugh track that will tell lazy viewers: “Laugh now …”
What is positive about Flat 27 is that it starts to try and tell the stories that we see so often around us but never see in our media. Like this week’s episode titled South African American. Looking at the people whose entire lives are made-in-America- fantasies, the episode had the potential to be truly funny but missed it somewhere.
It had contents of two South African Americans – straight from the townships of our rainbow land: “Ice T, Ice Cube and Dr Dre… Who is Chicco?” This was delivered in the appropriate “you-go-gurl” and-move-your- neck-in-a-funny-way accent. It could have been funny but it did not read, not that the actors were not good enough, They were, but they missed the delivery.
The series’ big asset has got to be Themba Ndaba, who plays a township lout Chippa, who is somehow deposited in this bohemian commune. Many township residents will know Chippa quite well, with all his declarations ending with the question “Or kanjani?” (It loses so much in English, but means, approximately, “Know what I am saying?”)
In most series this character gets sanitised to such an extent that no one knows what he is supposed to be apart from the producer or director. Not our Chippa; he is as raw and embarassing as they come. Flat 27 is a good idea, it could work very well.
Maybe both the audience and the producers need to grow into it until they meet each other half way.
Flat 27 is on SABC1 at 6.30pm on Tuesdays