Okay, if you didn't live in the USA in the 60's and always ate your Saturday night dinner while watching ABC's Wide World Of Sports, that is not going to make any sense to you at all.......my apologies.
Readers of this blog have been exposed to TV programs not only from the UK but Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well (not to mention the Wallander's from Sweden). Now I'm pleased to add a few mini-series from South Africa.
As most of you are aware, English is a minority language in South Africa spoken as a primary language by only about 8% of the population. However, it is spoken as a secondary language by a considerably larger percentage than that and is considered to be the language of commerce and research. I'm not sure how much programming is produced there in English, but here's a few interesting titles for those seeking to expand their television boundaries.
Ella Blue
"Ella Blue is set in the year 1961 and tells the story of a woman's physical, emotional and spiritual journey through the process of race classification in terms of the Group Areas Act of 1950 South Africa.
Ella and her family have lived peacefully for generations in a remote fishing village on the Cape Coast, until the day it is announced that the Census Official is arriving to classify every person in the small, secluded community according to their colour. Bit by bit the intimate little community is torn apart and is ultimately destroyed by the political policies of the day. Darrell James Roodt, who directed the Oscar-nominated film "Yesterday", is at the helm of this production. The title role is portrayed by Natalie Boltt and among her co-stars are Tertius Meintjes, Jonathan Rands, Nico Panagio, Anthony Wilson, Bo Peterson and Sean Cameron Michael."
Feast Of The Uninvited
"Feast of the Uninvited is the story of small lives touched by war. The backdrop to this story is a war with more than one name: The South African War; the Boer War; the Anglo-Boer War. The name of the war depends on the point of view of the speaker. It was fought between 1899 and 1902 between the British Empire and two Boer republics in Southern Africa. The reasons why it came about are many and varied, but in the lives of those who had to suffer through it, reasons are of marginal importance. The immediacy of their plight was their concern, not the abstractions that lead to it. To Captain Brooks, Harry the Welsh miner, the wealthy Van Wyk family and people like Daantjie van Wyk and his beautiful wife, Magrieta, the war became the ultimate test of who they really were. Never could they have imagined that such nameless fears, jealousies and hatreds lurked inside them. That rape and murder could enter their lives was unthinkable. Perhaps only the little dreamer, Fienatjie Minter, understood the things that would happen to her and the people around her because, in her strange dreams, only she could hear the dying children sing. This award winning drama has a relatively slow start in episode one, but stick with and the later episodes are great."
This series applies authentic language. The English speak English and the Boers speak Afrikaans with English subtitles.
Innocent Times
"There were good times, there were bad times & then there were Innocent Times.
Innocent Times is part road movie, part love story and part dark comic thriller and tells a story that unfolds across the past and the present. When Genevieve Scott-Thomas is let out of prison after almost two decades, her son Zac is killed when he falls off a balcony. Most think it is suicide, but Gene knows differently. To her it is a sure sign that her past is catching up with her. She decides to team up with award-winning journalist Jeff Levine and takes him on a journey into her dark past. As she reflects on her life, we flash back to a landscape of the mind, a strange world where a murder spree took place.
To create this multi-layered story, the technical production team of Innocent Times spent months refining the hyper-real CGI scenes of the past, shot under the direction of Tristan Holmes. The present-day scenes were directed by Alex Yazbek who created a film-noir effect, with characters that are slightly larger than life to follow through and compliment the styles of the past. To put the scale of this production into perspective, Innocent Times is a show made up of six episodes, but contains more special effects than an entire season of the popular American series, Heroes.
Filled with sinister twists and some shocking characters, Innocent Times promises to grip viewers from the start. The show boasts a small and stunning cast that is made up of Nina Milner (who made her debut in Ella Blue) as the young Gene, Justin Strydom (of Snitch fame), Quentin Krog as Zac Snr, Juliana Venter as the older Gene, Az Abrahams in the role of the journalist, and new-comer Matthew Lotter as Gene's son Zac Jr.
The cutting-edge technological effects with which Innocent Times is infused, are both stylistically breathtaking and emotionally heart wrenching. Innocent Times is very much a love story - as twisted as the love sometimes is, it is still very real and very much the driving force of this ground-breaking show. See how the characters of Innocent Times seek to outrun their destinies and live the perfect life.
Please note: this show has a very strong content warning (mostly for violence) and is not for sensitive viewers.
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