Add a live studio audience, allow the real Michael Mol to be completely himself as a talk show host and to interact with them, and whoa-la: the new The Dr. Mol Show on SABC3 (Fridays, 15:45; repeat Sunday 16:00) is suddenly very funny, energetic, dynamic and interesting television - and exactly what the doctor ordered.
The magazine show Hello Doctor with Michael Mol just turned into The Dr. Mol Show on SABC3 and is suddenly - and very cleverly - employing all of the tele-techniques of successful afternoon talk television. Same theme song (different opening title), same intent (health education), same set and same doctor, but suddenly The Dr. Mol Show is wonderfully "alive".
The entertaining talk hour with the funny telegenic host is immediately making for you-gotta-watch-this television. The Dr. Mol Show is now playing perfectly to its afternoon audience, cleverly incorporating all of the talk show genre's ''best practice'' production secrets - the main aim being: wow the crowd.
With a live studio audience, audience members who also ask questions, more banter, jokes and quips, The Dr. Mol Show is suddenly a whole new beast - just like the half-naked male model, Ryan, which Michael Mol unexpectedly trotted out in the first new episode to demonstrate, hands-on, the best sleeping techniques.
Yes, you could use boring diagrams, but if your studio audience is made up largely of women of all ages in an afternoon slot, why not teach and make them and viewers remember by making it both educational and entertaining?
It's exactly the funny show-and-tell technique The Dr. Mol Show immediately incorporated by trotting out some guy candy when a hunky male model, who Michael Mol only identified as Ryan, suddenly walked out - dressed in only pajama pants.
The studio audience audibly purred approvingly. Michael Mol also smiled. Because when you have the audience's attention, you can tell them anything.
Michael Mol, with the help of his male ''sleep mannequin" and a bed, proceeded to show the studio audience exactly how the different sleeping positions impacts the body. "I was going to do this, but then we got Ryan who looks way better than I does,'' said Michael Mol.
If a hunky barebod guy is the spoonful of television sugar you need to make the medicine go down and to prevent your TV audience from tuning out, The Dr. Mol Show got it instantly right. Tswelopele Productions produces the show with Michael Mol, Patience Stevens and Bradley van den Berg as the 3 executive producers.
The debut episode of the new The Dr. Mol Show was in a sense "classic Oprah"- from when she started with her talk show out and still sat and stood in the audience, took their questions with a hand-held mic and was visually "one of them".
Michael Mol's new talk show not only immediately popped visually (sleep model Ryan; a bed in the studio; studio audience shots); but had interesting inter-related topics all well conceptualised for television, as well as credible experts whom Michael Mol gently guided but kept on a short lease to extract their medical advice in a short and sweet way.
A visit to New York and Dr. Oz to interview him and included in the episode as a separate insert, was well produced and very well done. It was also producing genius.
The Dr. Mol Show simultaneously paid homage to the American talk show that was the inspiration for the Hello Doctor transformation, as well as clearly positioning - and immediately solidifying - Michael Mol's place as South Africa's talk show host version.
Earlier this month dr. Nadia van der Merwe, TV expert from the department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg told me that she considers Hello Doctor to be one of the best local shows on South African television, using the words "current, well-researched and informative".
The Dr. Mol Show has not only managed to become an enhanced and a more entertaining version of the Hello Doctor magazine show, but did it whilst keeping its core characteristics and intent in tact and skillfully adding the bells and whistles from the notoriously difficult talk show genre.
The only way this show could possibly have been any better? If Michael Mol personally handed out paediatric pillows to the studio guests.
For unlike Dali Thambo and The People of the South, handing out comfy cushions at the end in this talk show would have been the perfect (and here actually for once the appropriate) parting shot to camera.
