X Factor USA - Season 2: Top 16

Okay. So we've seen Adam Sandler play his own sister in a movie. But how on earth does Mario Lopez manage the same feat in a live show?

 

X Factor USA is back for another season on M-Net on Saturdays and Sundays just before prime time.

Die Nataniel Tafel - Review

With the advent of the information age and the internet, everyone who has an opinion has an opportunity of getting heard, no matter how uninformed those opinions might be.  Celebrities, of course, are no different, particularly as their opinions and ideas are more likely to seem authoritative simply because they are celebrities in the first place.  We see it everywhere: celebrities telling us how to save the rhino, stop global warming and even how to frost our cakes.

kykNET’s new offering, Die Nataniel Tafel, is more of the same, when beloved national treasure and performer, Nataniel, takes to the kitchen and starts dishing out quirky cooking advice instead.  Apart from being famous for his now clearly defunct brown rice and lentil diet and apart from boasting cheeks that give glowing testament to his great love of good food, we can’t help but wonder: what exactly does Nataniel know about cooking?  And when he clumsily wields a knife, plates up like your grandmother and smothers his dessert with copious amounts of raw egg whites, the answer is clearly: very little.

As any student of the culinary arts will tell you, the first chapter of any authoritative text on the subject is an exhaustive treatise on food hygiene and the horrible diseases and ailments you can inflict on the general public when you choose to ignore these guidelines.  Whilst Nataniel quite patronizingly takes to the air to educate the nation about the basics of cooking, it would seem that he himself is actually the one that needs some education.

Culinary faux pas aside, Die Nataniel Tafel is still an excellent vehicle for everything Nataniel.  Dressed in lots of somber slimming black, and in all manner of collars and ties apparently aimed purely at hiding his neck, Nataniel starts the show off perched uncomfortably on the edge of a table… but then he opens his mouth and hilarity ensues as we are - as always - entranced by his natural genius for making the ordinary seem bizarre, and the bizarre oh so common place.  A slightly longer version of the famous Nataniel Checkers advertisements, Nataniel also does a bit of cooking (sort of), hosts viewers who share recipes, gives advice on how to decorate a table, indulges in a bit of Checkers product placement and even presents a master class (but sadly nothing about food hygiene so far.)

A must see for Nataniel fans and bored middle aged housewives alike, Die Nataniel Tafel is sure to entertain.  Whether you will be trying out those recipes is another matter entirely.

Die Nataniel Tafel amuses on kykNET on Thursdays at 19h30

Khaya Mthethwa wins SA Idols Season 8

Congratulations to Khaya Mthethwa, the winner of season 8 of Idols!

And congratulations to Idols for having your first black male winner.  Much like the couple that had seven daughters in the hope of one day having a son, now that you finally have him, can you please stop?

Come Dine With Me South Africa - Season 2: When mental disease is served up as prime time entertainment...

“4 Strangers,  4 Dinner Parties,  1 Winner,” the opening titles proclaim, and when the second season of Come Dine With Me South Africa turns on the heat, things certainly couldn’t get any stranger.  

Popping the cork at the start of the second season of the very popular Come Dine With Me South Africa, the producers make a very deliberate play for attention in the season premiere by introducing us to an eccentric round of contestants.  There is quirky Financial Manager, Jo-Anne, who believes in fairies and glorious insincerity; and the pack rat with a heart of gold, teacher Anne Marie.   But whilst the two ladies might have been the talk of any other episode, this time around they pale in comparison to fellow competitor and eccentric self styled “competitive princess”,  Simphiwe Mtetwa.

During the introductory flashes, dear Simphiwe seems to have been cast as the stereotypical  gay man: gaunt, effeminate, extravagant and opinionated, swanning around antique stores in a scarf (that he probably refers to as a pashmina), and harshly dismissing anything and anyone not perceived to be of the highest standard with an uncoordinated flap of the wrist.   But the longer the camera lingers, the more we start suspecting that this is in fact much riper cheese that is being served up for our viewing delight.

Whilst mockery of the remarkable delusions of the average Joe is the staple of reality television and the line between delusion and full blown mental disease is arguably a thin one at times, it would seem that in search of ratings gold, Come Dine With Me South Africa may well have ended up digging through to the wrong side of the fence.  See, Simphiwe is not just slightly delusional:  Simphiwe deftly rejects reality entirely.  And substitutes it with his own.  

Obsessed with the term androgynous - which is apparently synonymous with fabulous in his alternate universe – and anything French, Simphiwe considers himself sophisticated and everyone else low class.     The camera shamelessly plays along: showing Simphiwe fishing a bottle of Moët out a pool, following him sauntering around shopping for antiques and filming all his comments to the backdrop of stylish decor shops. 

 

In reality, of course, he is anything but sophisticated. Ignorant to the point of seeming illiterate, Simphiwe astounds his fellow contestants with baseless criticisms that eventually descend to the completely ridiculous when he refuses to accept that a lamb is a baby sheep.  Whilst fast talking contestants and culinary crooks are a dime a dozen on this show, Simphiwe’s shenanigans reminds us more of a child pretending to be Princess Diana, and for a grown man, this is extremely disturbing. 

But what is even more disturbing is the care that Come Dine With Me puts into exploiting his shortcomings.  After carefully – and dishonestly – passing him off as a cut above with expensive champagne and stylish backdrops, as the last contestant to host his dinner party, Simphiwe’s all too plain reality is unveiled with glee as the climax of the episode when the camera descends on his sad little face brick house with the dead lawn.

More adept at tipping back champagne than cracking an egg, Simphiwe stumbles around the pokey kitchen, whipped into such a manic froth by the attention that he floats even further away from reality. After casually throwing away his failed attempts at making a basic dessert four times, he eventually gives up and just freezes the mixed raw ingredients. The remainder of the meal is undercooked chicken livers and pools of blood that gush from soggy stuffed peppers. With any moments of lucidity no doubt swiftly edited out, the result is embarrassing and painful to watch, from the mortified expressions of the fellow contestants to Simphiwe blaming the lack of alcohol on the butler and childishly decorating the plates for the starters and mains with spastic squiggles of chocolate sauce. 

By the time the end titles run to the tune of “I want to be a Star”, social media explodes, slating Simphiwe as the worst contestant ever, much to the delight of BBC Entertainment.  But whilst they gloat over how many tweets they received, we can’t help but wonder: have they given any thought to the clearly troubled soul that was set up and exploited so shamelessly?  The likes of Big Brother Africa has shown that not all people are cut out for reality television.  Do we have to see even more than on air violence before the producers of reality shows start screening their contestants properly?

New episodes of Come Dine With Me South Africa air on BBC Entertainment on Monday nights at 20h00

Dineo's Diary - Episode 1 Review

 

In Dineo’s Diary: Mogul in the Making, Dineo Ranaka takes to our TV screens and blows the lid off the newest epidemic ravaging our country: borderline psychotic delusions of grandeur.

Ranaka is probably best known for her unprofessional on air break downs and emotional instability at YFM and her equally public and remarkably mean spirited spat with Nonhle Thema a few years ago.  Since presenting Club 808 and supposedly launching her own fashion line, she now revs up her public image and, as if inspired by the fabled theory of perpetual motion, produces and stars in a reality television show about her becoming famous as a result of her producing and staring in the very same reality show about her becoming famous.  This circular reasoning is either extremely clever or exceptionally dim and within about two minutes of watching, most viewers will know exactly which.

Featuring neither interesting people nor notable events, Dineo’s Diary plays as a very slow and overly narrated guide on how not to run a business: she arrives 90 minutes late for a meeting for no apparent reason, calls her biggest client “thick” on national television and ends up waving a rubber penis at her.  She does take time out to make mention of her “t#ts”, pose in her underwear and show off her semi naked buttocks, though, so her target audience should probably be pleased.

Showering the viewer with hash tags and sporting the signature Vuzu made up American accent, Dineo’s Diary makes all the noises of being young, hip and happening, but ultimately does nothing more than deliver sub-sentient voyeurism of a particularly boring nature.  Whilst Ranaka in full wig and make up might look like one of the contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, sadly, she has none of their charm.

 

Dineo’s Diary fakes it on Vuzu on Wednesdays at 19h30. The real thing follows at 21h30 on RuPaul’s Drag Race and should not be missed. 

Homeland - Season 1 Episode 8

Is he or isn't he?  For weeks we have been wondering where Brodie's loyalties lie and now finally we get a definitive answer.  Who is the mysterious man in the chair?  And will he finally tell us the truth?

Questions get answered tonight on Homeland on M-Net at 20h30

The Only Way Is Essex - Season 1 Episode 1 Review

Brace yourself to be vajazzled by the invasion of the orange people!

"How to apply a vajazzle..."

Reality TV meets Melrose Place with a bit of Lauren from the Catherine Tate Show, The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE, for those in the know) is a bizarre and stilted mix of scripted drama and reality television. Brash and certainly not "bovvered", the show is unashamedly fake: from the people, the situations and their cars, right down to their orange skins.  Delighting in shallowness, the camera follows a collection of flashy young men and women with a predilection for fake tans, flashy cars and the swallowing of consonants. Meet philandering Mark while he works his guns at the gym, ponders fit birds and shops for man bags with his friend Arg. And Kirk, who is considering getting "ta-oos" and vapid Amy and Sam who contemplate the vajazzlement of their privates without getting glue on their bits.

TOWIE might be new to us South Africans, but back home in the UK it is a smash hit and currently in its fifth season.  And its not hard to understand why.  You only need to visit any airport or mall to get a taste of how disturbingly trashy the general populace of any country is.  And you only need to take a peek at what passes for prime time television to know that good writers and skilled directors aren't nearly as important as buff heroes with perfect teeth and sassy heroines with the right measurements who live idealised lifestyles.  Which is probably why TOWIE skips right over any semblance of substance and rather serves up flash and sass and sparkly teeth and drenches it in oodles of low fat trashiness - to the delight of the masses.

Get you weekly hit of saccharine sauciness or stare in dumbstruck amazement as an intellectual black hole opens on your television screen on BBC Entertainment this Thursday at 20h30.

Alphas - Episode 11 (Season Finale)

Tonight we lose an Alpha.

In the shocking season finale, the gloves come off and the bullets fly when war is declared against Red Flag. Our team of Alphas spearheads the operation, but after they suffer a distressing loss, Professor Rosen finally has to decide which side they are really on.

By far the best episode of season 1, stay tuned for the season finale of Alphas on Universal Channel at 20h00

Games of Thrones - Season 2 Episode 9

"Those are brave men at our gates.  Let's go kill them."

This is it. The climax of season 2. The epic face off between the Lannisters in King's Landing and Stannis Baratheon's overwhelming forces, the Battle of Blackwater is the most awe inspiring full out brawl ever shown on a made for television drama.  If you missed it on Friday, make sure to tune in again tonight on M-Net at 21h55.  

SA Idols Season 8: Something wicked this way comes

Board up your windows and lock your doors.  The horror that is South African reality television intensifies this weekend when the foulest franchise to plague our nation is resurrected to walk the earth for yet another season.

Unleashing a scourge upon the land, the siren call of fame brings to life thousands of mindless hungry ghouls, desperately clawing their way out of graves of obscurity for a moment in the light.  In their thousands they follow the scent of decay and descend upon stadiums and community centres, wandering aimlessly in queues.

After a long day of pushing and snapping, the moment arrives when individual contestants are herded into a well lit dungeon, lined with cameras.  There they proceed to tear the heads off their favourite songs and suck the life from horrified viewers. A gruesome display, their feverish and off key lamentations make it clear that the only pitch these contestants have ever heard of was a type of fork the villagers back home chased them with.

A creatively starved production that has long ago been killed off by scandal, the grating display is perpetuated and manipulated by a trio of judges and sustained only by the power of their egos and the life force that they draw from a terrified camera man aiming the lens in their general direction.  Limitless in their capacity to bore and annoy, and seemingly unstoppable, they return year after year, and when one self destructs in a vodka fuelled explosion of boney shrapnel, another hungry emissary of undeath immediately  rises to take its place.

Who will receive a golden stamp of approval from the undead trio and what foul creatures will they unleash on us this year?

South African Idols Season 8 starts on M-Net on Sunday, 3 June 2012, at 17h30

Alcatraz - Pilot Review

"On March 21st 1963, Alcatraz officially closed," the grisly narrator tells us in the opening moments, "due to rising costs and decrepit facilities.  All the prisoners were transferred off the island. Only that's not what happened. Not all."

Alcatraz is about the mysterious disappearance of 300 odd prisoners and guards off Alcatraz and how they have suddenly come back without having aged a day.  Remember when the whole world blacked out and saw a flash of the future in Flash Forward?  Remember how little you cared about the premise of that lifeless show?  Prepare yourself to care even less. 

Alcatraz takes a potentially intriguing premise and forces it into a flat and formulaic mold.  From the laughable tough and clever police officer and heroine Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) to the quirky Alcatraz expert and comic book writer Dr Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia, better known for playing Hurley in Lost) and the sinister government agent Emmerson Hauser (Sam Neill), Alcatraz almost immediately falls into a pattern where Madsen investigates, Soto connects the dots and Hauser looks sinister.  Jokingly referred to by TV critics as Lost in reverse, this time around people are walking around in a city, having flashbacks about being on an island.

Whilst our heroes don't seem to be much fazed by the supposedly strange goings on, female viewers should be quite pleased when early on in the pilot one of Alcatraz's biggest secrets is revealed:  the Rock was apparently a prison for washed up male models. Inmates with perfect teeth, square jaws and designer stubble abounded.  And now, they have mysteriously been sent forward in time to wreak havoc on modern society.  It's all terribly mysterious and oh so very boring.

Amazingly, JJ Abrams, the producer of such marvels as Alias and Lost, is also responsible for this heavy humourless flop.  Perhaps too preoccupied with all his current motion picture successes, we are sure that even Mr Abrams himself was not too surprised when this lame duck was cancelled after one season.

Get retro fashion tips from the time lost Alcatraz inmates on M-Net on Tuesdays at 20h30

American Idol Season 11 - And the winner is...

A belated congratulations to a Phillip Phillips for taking the crown in Season 11!  All things considered, he is probably the most talented contestant to win in the past 5 years. And he can sing too.

Anaconda 3: Offspring

Tonight e.tv hits rock bottom and starts digging, when, for the third week in a row, they dredge up yet another Anaconda horror flick for the Sunday night movie slot.  

And Anaconda 3: Offspring is hands downs the runt of the litter, which, given the dubious quality of the first two instalments, is pretty much an accomplishment.  A sequel to the storyline of Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid, Offspring revolves around two large, angry and very hungry Blood Orchid enhanced snakes that escape from a secret laboratory and start chewing up the citizenry. Expect more nobodies to be devoured, but this time the acting, plot and even the CGI snakes themselves is even more transparent than before. The cherry on the cake? The hero is portrayed by the Hoff. 

Cheap and nasty and not even in a remotely funny way, Anaconda 3 is quite possibly the worst movie to feature in this time slot in a long time. We say, if you don't have any options other than to watch this junk, rather read a book.

Anaconda 3: Offspring airs on e.tv tonight at 20h00

Enlightened - Episode 10 (Season Finale)

Amy is mad and she is not going to take it anymore. 

Sadly, DSTV has not given viewers much of an opportunity to fall in love with the self destructive reborn corporate hippie Amy Jellicoe. Screening double episodes of Enlightened late on Saturday evenings on M-Net Series the first season of this remarkable comedy drama was over so quickly that most viewers have probably never even heard of it.

Tonight, in the season finale, Amy has another spectacular work place blow out when she declares war on Abaddon Industries, busts out the gasoline, soaks the offices and drops a match. How is she ever going to recover from this one?  Or is her over the top breakdown perhaps all just a clever metaphor?

With a unique mix of touching drama and laugh out loud hilarity, Enlightened has not only earned Laura Dern a Golden Globe for her portrayal of a modern day corporate Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde, but it is definitely one of the best series to hit our screens this year.  

Watch Amy set fire to Enlightened on M-Net Series tonight at 22h30 and 23h00

The Bachelor - Season 15 Episode 9 - South African Fantasy Dates

Brad is coming to South Africa!  And no, ladies, unfortunately no panties will need to be flung at Cape Town International this weekend, because tonight's action was sadly shot on location in South Africa more than a year ago.

Having whittled the lustful ladies down to a desperate threesome, Bachelor Brad Womack drags Emily, Chantal and Ashley to scenic South Africa for more exciting dream dates.  Expect all the usual cliches.  The couples dress up in ridiculous safari gear and then get driven around to gawp at animals.  (One wonders what the purpose of those drab outfits are these days, other than being a neon sign pointing out the naive and gullible fools to the local criminals of course.) Bugs are eaten too and the obligatory elephants are ridden, but ultimately very little can be done to disguise the fact that poor old Brad is still not ready for what these ladies have to offer.

Don't miss The Bachelor tonight on Vuzu at 20h30

Bar One Manhunt - Season 2 Review

Like the old Bonnie Tyler song, Ursula Chikane is holding out for a hero. Yes, he’s gotta be strong and he’s gotta be fast, but preferably he must also have visible abs.

The Bar One Manhunt is back! And no, it is not some ridiculous adventure dating show, it’s Bar One’s lame attempt at finding a rugged hero that supposedly embodies the 25 hour day that their brand is famous for.  Ironically of course, the very last thing any of their lean contestants would be wasting calories on at the end of a hard day is a Bar One, but clearly an adventure show featuring the kind of people who actually eat their products would be a lot less appealing, and for the contestants and camera men, probably life threatening as well.

Boasting the “strongest, fittest and smartest men in South Africa”, the whole show is premised on the concept that if you put fit and attractive men on screen and find any conceivable excuse for them to wear as little as possible you don’t need the smallest semblance of productions values to guarantee success.

But the knuckle dragging amateur beefcake dying to be discovered is the least of our worries.  Staring at this dreary mess in amazement, we have to wonder, when exactly did presenter Ursula Chikane become such a revulsion?  Yes, she has always been annoying, but back in the day when she was ambushing unsuspecting children at the beach with a big Junior Sport microphone, she still had a certain charm.  Sadly that is no more.  Drowned, it seems, in fake pretension, excessive ego or bitter arrogance, what was once relevant and trendy now has the appeal of a fetid corpse, bloated with foulness.

And when the Bar One cameras roll, Chikane doesn’t hold back on that foulness either.  Sporting a severe bleached hairdo, she takes charge, reciting instructions in a bored monotone and so slowly, that one has to wonder just how smart the “smartest men in South Africa” really are.  And like a bitter man hating drill sergeant she doesn’t pass up on any opportunity to snap condescending comments either.  As thoroughly unpleasant as the rest of this production, we can’t imagine that anyone could enjoy this nonsense with the sound on.

Bar One Manhunt is back on SABC3 on Thursdays at 20h00

Bar One’s marketing of this contrived sugar rush is reminiscent of a little child claiming to have dropped a chocolate bar in the bath.  They can swear high and low that its really a Bar One, but one look is enough to know that they are actually shameless passing off a sodden floating poo.

Whatever you do, don’t be tricked into taking a bite.

1000 Ways To Die

Not all cocaine fuelled drownings are an immediate ticket to sainthood.  

1000 Ways To Die shows very little respect for the dearly departed as they count their way through a collection of the dumbest deaths since the Darwin Awards.  From a cocaine snorting warlord that gets his insides shredded by cutting lines on a table with diamond dust, to a couple that join the mile high club before getting their necks snapped by turbulence, each sad little tale gets a delightfully corny re-enactment whilst the narrator goes to great lengths to extract humour from their untimely demise. And for the technical minded, they even consult medical and other subject experts to explain exactly what snapped, where and why. 

Extremely tasteless and totally addictive, 1000 Ways To Die is fast paced, fun, and yes, even informative. 

1000 Ways To Die entertains on week nights on Sony MAX at 17h15