Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
The new local sitcom, Going Down Gorgeous, will stand to the eternal credit of the SABC. At long last that beleaguered corporation has produced a television programme which not only shows a uniquely South African comedic and satiric genius surmounting the very pinnacle of his powers, but which is, in itself, another example of the dizzying standards that are the hallmark of the SABC television drama department. They have never made better than this.
It comes as no surprise that the script for this series is by Mr Pieter-Dirk Uys – the sparkling sexual wordplay of the title tells you that straight off. No surprise either to see that Uys also takes the leading female role. That in doing so he had to force himself to reach for one of his padded brassieres is also not unusual. Why risk perilous diversification? If gaining the pantheon of South African popular culture entails having to wear numberless dresses, who cares? In a career of relentless gender modification, such as Uys’s, a set of balls can be an unnecessary encumbrance.
By clever use of newspaper clippings we are informed at the start of each episode of Going Down Gorgeous that for a gratifying half hour we are back in the golden age of National Party rule. PW Botha – long-time recipient of the lacerations of what Mr Uys in those days used to describe as his ”compassionate satire” – has just swept back into power. Setting a comedy in the fascinating late middle-period apartheid years was an audacious dramatic decision. But how else could Uys give another and stylised airing to the Seventies and Eighties genial interplay between urban white mistresses and their black servants? Remember what Proust said about remembrance of things past?
And it is in remembrance that Uys wields his most recent badinage. His spryly conceived rendition of a Seventies kugel madam being grumpily impatient with and yet touchingly protective of her ”garden boy” is an example of Uys’s gentle, or should I say ”compassionate”, nostalgia for the South Africa of yesteryear. He has endowed the ”garden boy” with the wonderfully amusing name Nimrod – in an ebullient burst of satiric flame, the Uys character refers to him as ”my vegetation consultant”. How refreshing it is to paddle in the home- baked mockeries of yesterday’s Linksfield Ridge. How needfully relevant.
This is indeed tough stuff. It follows that it is the bitterly pertinent, the insolent social comment of the piece, itself, which wins most admiration: Uys’s arch-kugel and her white madam friends actually secretly lust after the ”garden boy”. In a flourish of subtle structural burlesque, these other characters in the comedy are not only instantly recognisable but also quite incapable of being distinguished from one another. But for Nimrod, that is.
It can be stated without fear of contradiction that in this – the first we can only hope of many autumnal essays – Uys once and for all transcends his most luminous satirical rival, Leon Schuster.
I urge you to watch Going Down Gorgeous and, like many others, let your mouth hang open in wonder at how South Africa’s beloved court jester has reached this high. For the next 10 weeks or so his apotheosis is there for all to view on SABC3, at 10pm on Wednesday evenings.
Notwithstanding the triumph above, the much vaunted SABC television magazine, TV Talk, is in fact yet another seventh-rate product from our valued public broadcaster. On sale at R4,95, this cheapside compilation is however sent out as free punishment to those who have paid their television licences. Well, let’s say it’s occasionally sent to those who have paid their television licences. I’ve paid mine for as long as I can remember. I receive about one in four of the magazine. Someone up there likes me.
Describing itself as ”Your Ultimate TV Guide”, TV Talk turns out to be a 13-page listing of programmes with virtually no information other than tightly crammed titles. The remaining 37 pages in the magazine are devoted almost solely to advertising or mindless competitions. The ratio of advertising to copy is around 80/20. All this is foisted on the public as a ”complete entertainment guide”.
In fact TV Talk is another consummate rip- off from the masters of Auckland Hill. You’ll get more ”guidance” from any one of numerous newspaper television programme listings. What’s more, these will be up to date. And for the price, a newspaper gets thrown in.