The last of SABC-TV’s big budget drama series comes to our screens this week. ANDREW WORSDALE reports –
HOMELAND, the new 13-part-series on SABC3, is quite possibly the most engrossing drama series yet produced for local television. Full of well-judged performances and cinematic flair, it contains all the qualities that, up until now, one believed only the BBC could deliver.
The story, which spans three decades, opens in racially integrated Fietas in 1963, with three young boys pledging their friendship. Mike Slater, the ringleader, suffers at the hands of a sadistic father; sees his mother die; and grows up, through the bush war, to hold significant power in the Military Intelligence of the mid-1980s. Johan, the asthmatic weakling, becomes a journalist on a liberal rag but experiences dilemmas in exposing the political truths of the day. And Daniel, who journeys to Mozambique and teaches in a missionary school, becomes a lay-preacher and, eventually, a leading figure in the liberation struggle.
What may seem a contrived collection of characters dreamed up to serve as a didactic overview of apartheid history is soon quelled by the fine sense of characterisation and director Neal Sundstrom’s cinematic style. Says Sundstrom: “I don’t think it wears politics on its sleeve. This is not A Place of Weeping, for example, not an apartheid-driven story that relies on sensation and news-worthiness to get an audience. It’s rooted firmly in the dramatic characterisation of three friends from different sides of the track.”
A surprise to many will be the strength of lead actor Paul Buckby’s performance. Initially Sundstrom wasn’t too keen on casting him, “There he is selling shopping baskets on M-Net. I couldn’t see him as a toughened guy who spends years in the bush.” But Buckby cut his hair and Sundstrom managed to extract a performance of strength and subtlety that swaps his clean-cut image for something altogether more compelling.
“I love unlocking things in the actors, I think directors, by nature, should have psychiatry degrees. In the beginning a lot of the performers were lazy, pitching up on the day without being prepared and thinking this was just another job in a bad local series,” says Sundstrom, his voracious energy moving up another gear as we speak. “So I said ‘What the fuck’s going on? We’re making a movie here.’ I pushed them and from then on everyone went the distance in creating their characters.”
Originally commissioned by former SABC1 Head of Drama, Paul Kemp (himself responsible for some of this country’s more risible television efforts over the past decade), Homeland was written by British- based author David Gilman. Gilman is accountable for the clich-ridden The Syndicate and the stilted MMG Engineers. “It was the first time I’d done anything for SABC1,” says Sundstrom, “and everyone was warning me they don’t let you change the dialogue, they’ll insist on casting the actors … but none of that happened to me. Granted, I had to fight for some things, but I got what I wanted.”
On the subject of the script, Sundstrom is refreshingly honest: “I found a lot of the dialogue awkward, although the structure by David Gilman and concept by Kemp were great. It’s a no-holds barred South African story.” Together with his actors he changed a lot of the dialogue on set and there are now only a few moments where it jars.
Considering the size of the production, perhaps the most startling thing about it is the low budget and the speed at which it was shot. Wryly, Sundstrom notes: “We get the money Spielberg spends on a credit sequence.” With a budget of slightly more than R4-million, which translates into an unheard of economy of R5 700 per minute (most local drama stuff is budgeted at around twice that amount); an extremely strict shooting ratio of about six-to one (ie six takes for every one that ends up on the screen); and a packed schedule demanding shooting a 45-minute episode every six days, the result is more than just impressive.
Homeland is filled with intriguing angles and lots of camera movement. “I wanted everything to be shot like a film,” beams Sundstrom. “I mean the cross- border raid makes Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July look like a joke.” For that scene, which – as far as production value is concerned, is truly filled to exploding point – they didn’t get any support from the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). “On the day we shot it we managed to get a helicopter from the Ivory Coast that was here for repairs … and maniacally shot the shit out of the sequence.”
I can well imagine him shooting the scene. Sundstrom possesses such unbridled energy he forgets my name three times during the interview. But he’s entitled to be speedy. The series looks and feels good and boasts some of the best television acting we’ve seen on our screens in ages.
Apart from Buckby, there’s a superb showing by Terence Reis (Sundstrom dubs him “world class”), Vusi Kunene is his usual impressive self and Afrikaans actress Helene Truter really stands out in the sympathetic role of Afrikaans liberal Hermien. Even glamour-puss Ashley Hayden rises to the challenge and trashes her trendy-chic image as the promiscuous and low-brow Bonnie.
Sundstrom concludes: “With this series I feel we’re finally exposing our local talent. Usually, when people hear there’s a local series they just switch their televisions off. I hope this can change all that; this can get some kind of local star-system going that will enable us to make South African movies.”
Unfortunately, though, this will be the last big- scale local drama series generated by the SABC because the corporation has just drawn up a draft document outlining new commissioning procedures. Instead of having 52-week series, it recommends rotating strands of 13 to 26-week seasons, where a 13-part series could, for example, use 13 different directors. One-off dramas are also to be encouraged across the channels rather than on-going series. New commissioning editor for drama on SABC3, Clive Rodel, whom many regard as a breath of fresh air, concurs: “We’re trying to spread the small amount of money we have across a larger section of the industry and hope to encourage new talent and independent film-makers.”
Shooting has just begun on a four-part series called The Principal, a biography of Alan Paton, which is being shot on video tape and not film to keep costs down. Another is a four-parter, based on John Miles’s Deafening Silence, the story of a black policeman who fights a corrupt system; and a four- part series about Helen Joseph, are all in the pipeline. Rodel also feels the need for a television play of the week, as well as occasional television features. He wants these up and running by 1998.
Of course, that’s if things are indeed going to happen at Auckland Park. To produce a school of drama with the requisite vision, programmers are going to have to work as hard as Sundstrom did to make Homeland. In reality, though, they still seem trapped by unsettling strains of laziness, self- satisfaction and bureaucracy.
Last week an independent producer phoned a drama commissioning editor there just before five o’clock in the afternoon.
After the phone had rung for over three minutes it was finally answered by a cleaner who said that everyone usually goes home around four o’clock.
Homeland starts on Wednesday, September 11. To catch it, tune in to SABC 3 at 8.30pm