Things I hate About Afrikaans Radio And TV. Part 1

While SABC 2 is still celebrating Emmy nominations of such great shows like the sitcom Stokvel and crime series Zero Tolerance, a thunderstorm of bad Afrikaans sitcoms are looming on the horizon to upset everything.

Up to a year ago I was as happy as a seashore clam with the Afrikaans sitcoms on SABC 2. They were fun to watch, gave one a good laugh in the evenings and were filled with wacky off the wall characters. Their plot lines, weren't highly sophisticated but were still well enough written so that one kept watching.

But the new wave of shows are disgusting me, to the point of wanting to take a boiling hot shower in holy water in order to get myself clean again. Afrikaans slapstick comedy reached new all times lows when the show Gauteng-Aleng-Aleng aired.

G-A-A, is one of the worst examples of slapstick comedy, ever! The plot uses many of the old Vetkoek Paleis gimicks. We have the dumb blond in E minor squeak, some trailer park trash, and of course our beloved cape coloured, with cape flats brogue. Using the lowest forms of toilet gags, to ever be heard on prime time, and some equally bad sex jokes, this show aspires to be no more then a Vetkoek squeal, in a different setting, with the funny bits edited out.

I feel truly sorry for talented actors like Frank Opperman and Alvin Bruinders who have to say some of the mind boggling dialogue which is spoken in this show. I was shocked to discover that this show was made by well known director Willie Esterhuisen who not only wrote, but also directed, and starred in the smash hit "Vetlkoek Paleis". It's a sad day when a great director turns from doing it because he loves it, to doing it for the perks of having your name on the credits at the end of a show.

So why post a long rant about it? Because I have a bad feeling that this is soon going to become the kind of show people think Afrikaans speakers like to watch. It plummets the public opinion on all Afrikaans people to places it has never been before. Really people, do we need anymore bad press? Wasn't the apartheid era bad enough for our image?

It's time we set the bar a bit higher and try to see if maybe an Afrikaans show can get nominated for the most respected comedy show next year.

Footnote: These are not the ramblings of some old, out of touch "tannie", so lets please not even go there when trying to defend this trash.