The new weekday Afrikaans studio desk interview show Nuusdag Perspektief on eExtra (Openview 105 / DStv 195 / StarSat 489) is a terrific new addition to South African television - a worthwhile, well done, unique and surprisingly refreshing current affairs addition, giving seldom-heard voices a seat at the TV table.
Nuusdag Perspektief (Newsday Perspective) that started this week, is a companion sister show following after the very amateurish and badly done new Afrikaans TV news bulletin Nuusdag on 8 on Openview that also started on Monday.
Nuusdag Perspektief however is much, much better and also clearly has higher and visibly better production values, perhaps because it has less moving elements filling its half hour that those that require juggling by producers for putting a TV news bulletin on air.
The part of the Nuusdag Perspektief set in Johannesburg, another section inside the studio and an extension of the Nuusdag om 8 set, looks fantastic and is well-suited for this type of show in terms of circular backwall motifs, the amber hues, the white-and-black raised circular platform and triangular glass tabletop. It looks slick, highly professional and creates a visual aura of gravitas.
While anchor Charlene Lackay was already extremely good during the debut episode of Nuusdag Perspektief on Monday night, the former SABC anchor and kykNET presenter Elvin Presslin and his astounding control of the discussion panel, his pacing, questioning, interviewing style and Afrikaans language use was utterly fantastic during night two.
Elvin Presslin could be made the permanent full-time anchor of Nuusdag Perspektief - he's believable, prepared, knowledgeable, informed, plain-spoken and utterly excellent - it's clear he would shine in this role - he already did.
Both Charlene Lackay and Elvin Presslin are extremely deft and adept at phrasing questions, making guests feel safe and comfortable, phrasing questions to make guests elaborate, knowing when to interrupt and most of all letting guests speak and giving them time to explain and answer.
Two things are setting Nuusdag Perspektief apart that neither e.tv nor Openview bothered to highlight or focus on but that are very important and that, upon and after watching, stand out very clearly and that are both huge positives - not just for e.tv, OpenView and eExtra but for South African television broadly.
Firstly, it's the first show of its kind for, and available on, free-to-air digital terrestrial television in this genre (although as a side-effect it's available to pay-TV audiences on DStv and StarSat too).
Simply put there's nothing else like it available on any of the SABC's channels or on e.tv: an Afrikaans, current affairs, full half hour interview show.
While eExtra's Nuusdag Perspektief will invariably compete with kykNET & kie's (DStv 145) KLOP! with Heindrich Wyngaard and kykNET Verslag In Gesprek with Waldimar Pelser on kykNET (DStv 144) - something that Nuusdag Perspektief will clearly be able to do and immediately showed it's capable of doing superbly - that is not necessarily the same audience or the audience that the show is going after, since eExtra is targeting and is for non pay-TV viewers.
Put another way: The Nuusdag Perspektief production values on eExtra are such that free-to-air viewers are actually getting a current affairs interview show in Afrikaans that rivals the premium values of pay-TV talk show and current affairs interview programmes - like flying British Airways having only paid a kulula fare.
Secondly, Nuusdag Perspektief visibly appears geared towards something unspoken, but also great - something hugely welcomed if that turns out in fact to be the case.
Sadly e.tv, Openview and the Nuusdag team couldn't bother to communicate or issue anything beforehand to South Africa's press and TV critics about Nuusdag Perspektief, and e.tv and Openview failed to release any specific programming publicity about the show.
Therefore it's not possible to say definitively if the conclusion is correct, but upon watching the first two episodes, the show has created the very strong impression that it is and will actually be a current affairs interview show about, and geared towards, South Africa's coloured community.
While the first episode of Nuusdag Perspektief revolved around and included a discussion around land expropriation with a particular emphasis on the coloured community, the second episode on Tuesday in a terrific episode tried to unpack how coloured people feel about the Afrikaans word "kleurling".
New voices, seldom-heard voices, and silenced voices were suddenly given not just time to speak but to inhabit a "proper" space on television - given attention and "status" on a non-verbal level to say "you are good enough to have a seat at the TV table and to speak your truth".
If this is how Nuusdag Perspektief on eExtra ventures forward, it will be phenomenal and groundbreaking - staking out a first and a unique place not occupied by any other programme on South African television, catering for and going after an audience segment and in a genre that until now has been completely ignored.
