Around this time last year I wrote something in this column about how television stations assume that over holiday periods the nation’s IQ drops by nine tenths. This recent season has again proved the point.
Most especially has this been the case with the movie end of the much-advertised DStv “bouquet”, which continues to broadcast entertainment that would tease the intellectual contempt of a pre-nursery school denizen.
I had a look around the so-called Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), that revealing menu of DStv delights. Here are a few of the offerings from last weekend’s electrifying selection. Pick of the week was the Sunday-evening 8pm movie, Jack Frost. The EPG described this provocative inspection of the cheerless underbelly of American urban life as: “A busy blues musician, who neglects his family, dies in a car accident. A year later he returns as a snowman and now he can help his son, as long as the sun doesn’t shine! Starring Michael Keaton and Kelly Preston.”
If walking, talking snowmen aren’t your bag you could always let the dog chew the remote control and find yourself over at Movie Magic 2 where they were showing Career Girls. Of this one the EPG gloated, “Two former room mates who are now successful career women get together for a reunion. During the weekend they bump into several faces from their past and rekindle their old friendship.”
This 1997 emotional blockbuster starred Oscar certainties Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman. M-Net’s determination to expose the South African public to the ferocious excesses of the American domestic tragedy doesn’t stop with films about animated piles of snow.
Describing another distressing chronicle, Golden Receiver, the EPG summed up: “Josh is struggling to come to terms with the fact that his widowed mother is ready to start dating again. He wants nothing to do with her new friend.”
An extremely dated classic, The Third Man (l949), was on Movie Magic last Sunday evening and, if an umpteenth viewing of that wasn’t too appealing, you could always have pre-recorded the afternoon comedy attraction, Leave It to Beaver. From its title it could be hoped this was something that had slipped over by mistake from the Hustler channel. It was considerably worse.
“The Cleavers … a typical American family: wise dad, loving mom and two well-adjusted boys with big ideas. Wally Cleaver is trying to get out of a date for his best friend and Beaver Cleaver wants a bicycle.” Starring Christopher McDonald and Janine Turner, this heart-wrenching cinematic interrogation of domestic adversities is available all over DStv, and probably will be for some months yet.
Enough of being whimsical. What needs to be asked in all seriousness is why the M-Nets and the Movie Magics continue to gush out this seventh-rate schlock. And it doesn’t only get exposed at Christmas, it’s there all year round. If this is what M-Net and Movie Magic describe as “top-class entertainment” then it’s high time someone took them to the competitions board.
The Royal Variety Performance lived up to all expectations in that it was decidedly worse than last year. The organisers-cum-producers seem to have forgotten what is meant by “variety”. Where are the magicians, the comics, the ventriloquists, the whole panoply of light entertainment?
They’ve been replaced with a series of lookalike and soundalike pop groups, aged screechers like Shirley Bassey and a series of front-of-tabs stand-up comedians who are a sore disgrace to the name. Small wonder Lizzie sent Charles to undergo the experience. Mind you, he probably enjoyed it.
The SABC news department again exhibited its worth last week when it dispatched one of its reporters with instructions to make excuses for the savage little shit who attacked English tourist Sarah Heuer with a screwdriver. A psychologist was interviewed, who duly trotted out some nebulous expiation of what had driven the desperate wretch to commit his deed. Then mugger-daddy was given a minute or two to slobber about what went wrong with his poor, misunderstood son.
The item was at pains to explain that Heuer’s injuries were slight. The above again shows that it’s taken only a couple of months for Snuki Zikalala to flush out all that dated Financial Mail sense of fair play and balanced reporting that was infecting Barney Mthombothi’s thinking. Snuki’s quite obviously now got him firmly under control.