Maureen Barnes Down the tube
Until last Sunday, my acquaintance with e.tv was through the newspaper schedules. Friends, either new or old, while immensely popular with the young and hopeful, was not worth turning back the clock for, nor was early Oprah, and as with M-Net, if the movie was good – and some were – I’d seen it.
But they did have a very pretty test signal, which I watched from time to time.
However, I tuned in to e.tv’s first current affairs programme on Sunday night and was agreeably surprised. Special Edition (7pm) was mostly very good indeed and crammed a great deal into the hour-long programme.
I had expected a sort of cloned Carte Blanche, full of prurient items about the intimate love lives of two-headed, lesbian, learning-impaired geriatrics. But apart from an item on long-overdue changes to the law which criminalises adult male homosexual practices which could have been handled with more dignity, every item was excellent.
Jane Dutton, the anchor for the programme, is first-rate. She’s personable, articulate and relaxed in front of the camera.
What a find. It’s worth tuning in to see a professional at work. She’s a South African who worked in the SABC’s London bureau for some years before returning to Cape Talk Radio’s news department.
First came The Price of Peace, a piece on the tragic Lesotho fiasco. I’d seen, read and heard more than I wanted to know about the matter, but this well-written and edited item kept me watching to the end. I can’t imagine our government liking this sharply critical and insightful analysis but it might do well to heed it.
Then came the gay-rights item, which dwelt lingeringly, la Carte Blanche, on the – if you’ll pardon the alliteration – lascivious legal language employed by the warped minds who drafted the original law, with its emphasis on sodomy and its detailed description of the practice.
We saw a happy gay couple acting like teenagers for the camera – a kiss here, a bit of comradely bum-fondling there, and a spot of washing up the dishes together gave us the full picture. But did we need it? Anyone with half a brain agrees that change to this punitive law is long overdue.
Next was a report not only on the rebuilding of the bombed Planet Hollywood restaurant at Cape Town’s Waterfront, but on the progress of Bruce Walsh, the extraordinarily brave victim who lost both legs and sustained other injuries.
The awe-inspiring endurance of the human spirit in some special individuals came over clearly, helped by good camerawork and sympathetic editing. Go well, Mr Walsh.
If this first programme is any indication of the standard of e.tv’s news department, we are in for a treat.
Two British series not to be missed started last week. The Ambassador (SABC3, Wednesday, 9.30pm), featuring Pauline Collins as an honest, outspoken woman with a great deal of common sense who becomes British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland – which just tells you it’s fiction, doesn’t it? The stories are complete in each episode, and, as a friend said, for once they are not about cops or lawyers.
The other is Silent Witness (M-Net, 10pm), featuring Amanda Burton – remember her as the doctor in Peak Practice? She’s still a doctor but this time a forensic pathologist at Cambridge. This production has the “strong woman” style made famous by Helen Mirren in Linda la Plante’s Prime Suspect series. It kicked off with a riveting two-part story, Buried Lies by Kevin Hood, about the death of a child, and although a bit explicit when it came to grisly post-mortems, I blotted them out and was glued to the set.
Both series demonstrate the importance of a good script – without which no amount of nifty camerawork, top-notch acting or clever directing is worth anything.