It is school holidays again, thankfully the last day as I can really see that Liam and Luka are bored. We asked Liam how his day was yesterday and he promptly informed us that he had not had a good day. Some friends in the park were nasty to him and his sister irritated him when he had a friend over for the afternoon.
Last night as Liam goes off to bed we tell him to try and sleep late, we tell him tales of our own youth (like old people do) of how we used to sleep until almost noon. Liam being an early riser tells us that he prefers to wake at 5am!
This morning Gerhard and I chat about this sleeping late phenomenon and we realise that it is only once you reach your teenage years that sleeping late becomes a thing as you end up watching bad television until the early hours of the morning. So Liam will probably carry on waking up at the crack of dawn for some time to come seeing as we send the poor kid off to bed at around 8pm without fail.
All of a sudden I recall Monday nights back in high school, my entire family already tucked in bed and me alone in front of the TV watching Beverley Hills 90210. As if that is not bad enough, I had to carry my little FM radio from my room to the TV room because the erstwhile SABC of my youth did something really stupid, they dubbed a TV series aimed at teenagers made in America into Afrikaans, really BAD Afrikaans and the lips were just never in sync. The voice over artists (I think that used to be a real job in South Africa) never quite got it right and the artists sounded much older than the actual high school characters that they were meant to portray! You could not bear to listen to the Afrikaans version of Beveley Hills 90210!
There were lots of programmes that the SABC of my youth deemed important enough to translate, some from German. I don't remember all of them but there was "Die Swartwoud-kliniek" that was "Die Schwarzwaldklinik" , "Derrick" and who could forget the cat eating alien "Alf".
One of the worst simulcast programmes must have been "More is nog `n dag" better known as "Life goes on", a series featuring Corky, a young boy with downs syndrome, it was quite frankly insulting the way that the voice over artist portrayed this young man, this one I must admit I ended up watching in the real Afrikaans for years before I realised that the original soundtrack was available on radio 2000!
When any international artists come to South Africa it always amazes me how fast the tickets manage to sell out, even lesser known 'internationals' like Mumford and Sons must just love coming here, the tickets sell out faster than you can say "Man van Intersek" that you may recall as "Gemini Man" and they add second, third and even fourth shows to meet local demand. I am not surprised by this as we seem to forget how isolated we were from the world not that long ago. The Oscars were not transmitted to South Africa, US shows such as Knot's Landing and Falcon Crest were withdrawn from South African circulation and we were left with soapies like Loving, the Bold and the Beautiful and "Rustelose Jare" also known as the Young and the Restless.
Following South Africa's isolation from the world just as television was getting going elsewhere in the world, we then started producing local series, most notably some series for the kids like "Haas Das se nuuskas", we all know the tune to that one and "Liewe Heksie". We, of course reminiscing about our youth, held the TV of our younger years in high regard. When the kids were old enough we were excited about showing them the programmes of your youth. Well Liam and Luka hated it, and I must admit it was like watching paint dry! In a world of Teen Titans, Dora the Explorer and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who would watch stuff from the seventies?
Even programmes such as The Thorn Birds (oh man that old priest was every girls dream) now looks lame, and you wonder what on earth we were thinking watching 'futuristic' series like Macgyver. Richard Dean Anderson had a mullet, and we all thought he was cool. My own brother almost became known as Macgyver for all eternity because of that spikey haircut.
Now of course we have Netflix and Showmax and we have TV on demand, ironically enough some of the other bad locally produced TV is now available on demand. Things like "Orkney snork nie" and "Vetkoek Paleis". Why of why...
As for me, I spent my nights catching up on a series starring a style icon Sarah Jessica Parker. I was without M-Net in South Africa when Sex in the City first aired in 1998. I was at varsity and I only had a tiny television without pay TV. I had to watch soapies like the Bold and the Beautiful (again). So let me not keep you too long as I am only about half way catching up on this series, and I still have many hours to get through before I will know how much I have really been missing out on.
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