The community of a mine was the environment for one of the SABC’s most memorable dramas ever, but it’s unlikely The Villagers will provide any reference point – bar its common setting – for the SABC3’s new homegrown, four-day weekly soap.
The as-yet unnamed serial, which is pinned for the 6.30pm slot Mondays to Thursdays, will be the forerunner to another SABC3 soap called Avenues which is set to take up position in a post-primetime adult slot from August.
Both soaps should come as something of a surprise from a channel that once prided itself on sophisticated documentary and drama material, but SABC3 is beginning to pull rabbits from its hat at a startling rate, so the news of the serials fits in rather well with its eclectic mix of programming.
Actor and former Top Billing presenter Neil McCarthy, actor Mitzi Booysens and former SABC3 and M-Net presenter Tanya Logan are the scriptwriters on the mining soap which is still in the process of being cast. As topical as possible, it centres on a mine in crisis because of the gold price.
The soap has the usual collection of South African pop opera characters: a drug-addict, a nymphomaniac, a racist bartender (called Ted Dixon, the same name as the character played by Clive Scott in The Villagers), a whizkid stockbroker, workers with grudges, a man with a shocking secret, a boxer and someone mysterious described as a “quiet one from the north”.
Bullion heists, weddings and a few sudden deaths will keep the pace against a soundtrack of deafening drills and shebeen CD players.
A competition is being run by a Sunday newspaper to find a name for the new soap, and there are already rumours that the channel could shift it to a 6pm slot in direct competition with M-Net’s Egoli once its ratings have stabilised.
Avenues is a rather different affair. Judging from a sneak preview it is pungent with sex, dashing from bedroom to open field to the back seats of cars.
Written and directed by Jan Groenewald, this adult soap has snatched so many of South Africa’s TV stars that it is hard to imagine who will be cast in the mining saga once Egoli’s actors have also been subtracted.
Divas Judy Page and Abigail Kubeka headline Avenues, supported by former Mr South Africas Paul Phume and Michael Mol, sex kitten Amor Vittone, Magda Beukes, Ryno Hattingh, M-Net presenters Henrietta Gryffenberg and Carol Mogale, Gavin van den Berg, Paul Buckby, Mark Mulder, Michael de Pinna, Malcolm Terry, Michelle Garforth … the list goes on.
Just like Egoli and every other soap on earth, there is a class war at the heart of Avenues. Covering almost all the bases, there is one black family, two white families – one English, one Afrikaans – and one family where the mother is Afrikaans and the father English.
Children are born out of wedlock, wo-men are accused of being whores, men kiss each other, a teacher is unveiled as a stripper, domestic workers fall prey to the evil advances of their employers and an ageing actress takes her revenge on society.
Avenues will air in 26 parts.