An evil queen must have people doing her awful bidding - or perhaps she's bewitched the whole land: M-Net's got the broadcasting rights to the new American TV season's biggest new show viewership wise (nope, not Terra Nova) but has gone and done the impossible by relegating it to M-Net Series (DStv 110)! And dumping it on a Saturday. I know. Insane.
M-Net Series made the breathlessly shocking announcement that Once Upon a Time will suddenly be starting on M-Net Series on Saturday 25 February at 20:30. Of all the new TV shows, Once Upon a Time is the biggest new hit, viewership wise, in America where it's about 9 episodes old and has surpassed everything else - including the soon-to-start Terra Nova on M-Net.
In my opinion M-Net and M-Net Series' foolhardly and simply wrong decision to put this new drama on M-Net Series is inappropriate, bad planning, a major loss for what the prestige of M-Net as a premium TV channel is supposed to be, completely paradoxical and indicative of schizophrenic scheduling.
Is anyone actually watching television in Randburg, I'm wondering? Really - who does this and who all comes up with these insane decisions to deliberately not maximise the value to your company, your brand, and to your viewers, as a television business?
M-Net saw, and executives will know how superbly well Disney's Tangled performed at the end of last year for the often ratings challenged pay TV broadcaster. Now a beautifully crafted new TV drama with depth from the same Disney company comes along - a show both adults and children will be able to enjoy on different levels - but it's not allocated to the M-Net channel (DStv 101). It's mind-boggling.
And Terra Nova (as it should be) will be on M-Net which viewers will be able to enjoy in high definition (HD), but not Once Upon a Time which has been performing even better than Terra Nova.
What is Once Upon a Time about? Well in short, imagine that every fairytale character really existed. Or exists. Imagine that the Evil Queen from Snow White cast an evil spell which made all of them - all of them - forget who they really are. Imagine she took and transported them from their world, to ours, to a small town called Storybrooke. Everyone is there - from Cinderella to Prince Charming, from Rumpelstilskin to Gepetto and everyone else but none of them know who they are.
Without giving the plot away, imagine Snow White and Prince Charming had a daughter called Emma (she's not aware of her lineage or heritage and is now al grown up. She's the only one who can break the curse. Evil Queen is the mayor of Storybrooke. Then Emma arrives in Storybrooke and the drama starts.
What makes Once Upon a Time excellent, is the way the story and each episode advances with something happening within Storybrooke as Emma comes closer and closer to the truth and meets the ''townsfolk'' (who of course are storybook characters and share some traits from their real personalities) - as well as surprising backflashes within each episode that tells a fairytale story related to the main story for added perspective.
The cool thing is how Once Upon a Time's backflash story (or the concurrent B part in every episode) contains surprise twists. It's the fairytale story we all know, but there are certain ''facts'' and ''events'' that we actually discover we didn't know about and which adds another dimension and depth to the well-known stories we all thought we knew.
ALSO READ: Glee! Once Upon a Time! The River! Ringer! What THE HELL is M-Net and M-Net Series thinking?? Seriously.
ALSO READ: The absolutely disgusting way in which M-Net treats Glee, now shunting the show to M-Net Series for its 3rd season!
ALSO READ: M-Net gets The River but inexplicably goes and dumps the Steven Spielberg produced TV drama on M-Net Series.
