Television soap operas are extraordinarily successful in South Africa, but Isidingo is the one that’s really `cleaning up’ the viewers, writes Charl Blignaut
On the television monitor in the corner of the make-up room Cherel is looking tearful and slightly horrified. She holds a bottle of pills up to the light. “Poor dear,” says Nadine Preg, the Isidingo make-up boss, as she hands me a steaming cup of filter coffee. I’m not sure if she means me or Cherel.
This is my first day on the set of Isidingo, South Africa’s newest and deepest daily TV drama. I am yet to grow accustomed to the monitors dotted liberally across set that relay scenes live – and two months ahead of what we’re watching at home – as they are being taped in studio.
“It’s almost the end of the current session,” says the show’s dizzyingly obliging publicist, David Wilson, who is showing me around and feeding me further cups of coffee and biscuits. “Next week everyone goes on holiday for a few weeks. They’re all exhausted.”
You’d hardly tell by looking at the cast, who have been bustling into make-up, out of change rooms and on to set since 7am. While, at the other end of the corridor, Generations will spend the week battling some of their cast over new exclusivity contracts, at Isidingo Tina Jaxa – aka Lorain – is shrieking with excitement over her new, improved storyline. There she goes now, sporting a brand-new hairstyle and an obscene amount of energy.
And here comes Wilson Dunster – the currently deranged Pierre – striking up a conversation with the publicist. “You know,” he says, “It’s the darndest thing, but the other day I was walking down the road and this bus actually stopped – in the middle of the traffic -stopped, and the driver called me over to chat about Pierre …” Off he goes with Jaxa to rehearse today’s lines.
If this is exhausted, then something must be up in the lower corridors of the SABC. While, all around the world, traditional soap operas are losing viewers, in South Africa the format is booming.
The past year has seen Isidingo enter the market and gain a daily average of over 800 000 viewers. What’s more, breaking down the ratings, it seems like a new kind of audience. Like its cast, the people who watch Isidingo are almost as black as they are white, slightly older than they are younger, and – somewhat surprisingly for the genre – as male as they are female. “It doesn’t seem the show has taken viewers from either Generations or Egoli,” says Wilson as I ponder the figures.
Indeed, the original South African soap, Generations, has continued to go from strength to strength since it settled into its 8pm slot. In its six years on air, Generations has overtaken The Bold and the Beautiful as the most watched show in the country. Almost 7-million people a day watch Generations, 80% of them black, many aspiring to the advertiser’s best friend: the new middle class.
Add to those figures Egoli’s steady half-a- million – chiefly white and Afrikaans – viewers and you’d think local audiences would have reached saturation point.
Not even close, say the men in suits. Within the next year South Africans will, in all probability, be able to choose from five local soaps instead of three. SABC2 recently commissioned a new Afrikaans drama to air twice weekly and e.tv is considering pilot episodes for its own daily soap.
Of all the local dramas, though, you’ve just got to admit there’s something about Isidingo. Over the past few months I too have been a dedicated follower of events on Horizon Deep. As the gold price fluctuates precariously, so do the storylines. A week would be emptier without Cherel’s murderous schemes, Mike’s racist philanderings, Derek’s smooth charms or Lorain’s latent ambitions. I still love to stop by Generations – if only to hear Queen toss out winners like, “We-ell, dulling, I suppose there’s always plastic surgery,” or to witness the villainous Ntsiki wreck yet another life without so much as breaking a fingernail. But the thing with Isidingo runs deeper.
Of everyone, it is the cast of the series who are most aware of the particular relationship they have forged with viewers in the past year. Where Generations and the Bold offer escapism, Isidingo tends to play it closer to ground level – more like Britain’s East Enders. Whereas Hanli Rolfes – who plays the former alcoholic Sarah-Lee in Generations – will be stopped from buying booze at her local bottlestore by irate members of the public, an Isidingo character is more likely to find themselves engaging in lengthy hugs with strangers. Where Pamela Nomvete – La Ntsiki, the Generations superbitch – will get her face slapped in Woolworths or be pulled in two by rival fan bases in Dions, Isidingo characters more often find themselves at the centre of a low-key race debate.
All of them, of course, are prone to the little old lady treatment. My second day on set, for example, I hook up with Jamie Bartlett -big, bad Mike O’Reilly – on the way to lunch. Suddenly before us there appears a vast gaggle of geriatrics. “Tour group,” mutters the publicist and quickens his pace. The last thing I see is Bartlett smiling bravely as a sea of white hair encroaches, a little old lady pecking on his shirt and asking him kindly why he’s such a goddamn racist pig.
If you ask focus groups, they’ll tell you it is Isidingo’s “realism” that sets the soap apart. They say the show educates without patronising – and at least two South African academics are currently researching their theses on Isidingo as an exercise in cross- cultural pollination.
Much of this has to do with the writing. You need only look at the steady, pervading horror of Cherel’s abusive childhood or the central inter-racial relationship on the show – between mine boss Derek Nyati and rich bitch Philippa de Villiers – to see that Isidingo benefits from one of the finest writing teams ever assembled on local TV. We have witnessed many inter-racial relationships on our screens in recent years, but few have been as lasting as Philippa and Derek’s.
“The thing about it,” says Bianca Amato, who plays Philippa, “is that the writers developed the relationship over time. There was this intellectual sparring between the characters – they were politically agitated by each other. When it eventually transformed, it was organic.” Of course, once you hit the vein, there’s a lot more going down. “Whites like Derek a lot,” says Hlomla Dandala of his character. “Especially older ladies. In a way he nullifies their rampant fears of black men. From `the brothers’ though, there’s a mixed response. It’s still not really cool to have an affair with a white chick. Derek is accused of making it, but then selling out …”
Mitzi Booysen, one of the show’s senior writers, says that the Philippa/Derek thing was controversial when introduced. “We lost a lot of our white, Afrikaans viewers. We lost them, they are gone and there has been no attempt to bring them back,” she says with a charming bluntness. Yet, Booysen also insists, as does the show’s supervising producer Hillary Blecher, that there is no policy or agenda regarding cultural integration on Isidingo. “We absolutely follow our instinct,” says Booysen of the writing team. “We’re here to tell brilliant stories about real people,” says Blecher.
Both admit that sometimes they get it wrong. Trish, for example, was declared HIV-positive and then a few months later proved to have been mis-diagnosed. “We chickened out,” says Booysen. “We should have had the courage to play that story out.” Which is why they’re being a lot more careful before introducing a gay character to the show. It’s not about losing viewers, it’s about doing the right thing.
Blecher repeatedly stresses the show’s educative potential, which she considers an intuitive strain woven through the characters’ lives. But even the best writers, says Blecher, need the best actors if they’re going to liberate the genre.
And it’s true. It’s only really when you’re standing in a darkened studio six that the secret of Isidingo’s success clicks into place: disciplined ensemble acting by a cast that includes the likes of Dorothy-Anne Gould, Michael Brunner, Wilson Dunster, Michelle Botes and Jamie Bartlett. The very finest old thesps the country has to offer.
In the studio Tamara -the show’s Russian- born, former-prima-ballerina performance director – is taking the actors through their paces. The kitchen. Late at night. Philippa sidles up to Cherel at the fridge. “What? Still up?” she drawls, “Nothing like a guilty conscience to keep a girl awake at night. It’s playing havoc with your looks, you know.” By the end of the bitchy but beautifully nuanced scene I want to stamp and applaud as if I’m sitting in the theatre.
“It’s about people and human interaction,” says Botes when I catch up with her later in the canteen, “Cherel isn’t a pure soap bitch. She’s not impotent. She’s a human being; she’s driven by life. She uses people because she’s sore and needs to be in control.” When I ask how close that is to her own life, Botes smiles and says. “Let me just say that I’m really glad I took the series. To liberate the bitch has been extremely rewarding. I wish everyone could feel this way – that they have total control of their lives.”