Don't waste your time watching Nestle's stale advertiser-funded production on SABC3. The sticky mess of a "seen it all before" reality show pandering with a one dimensional media portrayal of masculinity in the Bar-One Manhunt is one cliche-ridden bore - a melted chocolate left in the sun for too long.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a single second of non-overly dramatic music in this "Camp Staaldraad re-enactment" sponsored by chocolate, and plastered on television.
It's almost as if the producers realized they have to fill the lack of not dramatic enough narrative will constant and hyped instrumental music. Ominous drums beating in the African savanah. Cymbals. Rickety camerawork. Ooh, this is all so real and realistic - just like Ursula Chikane's pregnant pause which is a blatant rip-off of what Jeff Probst introduced with Survivor. "The Bar-One Manhunt ... starts now."
The show has a hokey elimination slogan: "Surrender your watch". That means that a contestant's "25 hours are up". Too sad viewers won't and don't care for any of them. All they keep spouting as short soundbytes are "it's tough", "it's tough" and "come, boys" "come, boys" but none were even ever properly introduced. You don't know who they are; and therefore you don't care.
A stern Ursula Chikane as the presenter comes across to me as maybe not really wanting to be there. Why you would smile and be pleasant as the image of your own brand on Top Billing; then go portray "Ursula the opposite" in this quasi-reality production doesn't make sense at all.
It makes the viewer wonder which Ursula, or if "any-Urusula" persona they see, is actually real. (If you're like this in the one non-drama; supposedly non-acting show; and like that in the next non-drama; supposedly non-acting show, viewers start to see it all as one big act.)
This tedious, unoriginal and drawn-out non-scripted programming plays like The Weakest Link set in the bush, for men. With Wipeout USA elements added. And it's funny: For a show purporting to be about finding the best man, the men are forced to choose and eliminate "the weakest member". Is that what real best men do?
"Gentleman, no-one said that the Bar-One Manhunt was going to be easy," says Ursula Chikane with a haughty tone. Too true. And no-one said the second season of this uninspiring, empty-calorie and cringe-inducing television would be compulsory viewing. Forget about "25 hours" - the second try for the Bar-One Manhunt doesn't even deserve one hour of your time.
Yes, the Bar-One Manhunt will make you cry - if you haven't first already poked your eyes out.
[And as a sidenote: This shoddy show comes across as amateur in the communications arena as well. Nestle and Bar-One couldn't be bothered to inform or even invite all media and TV critics when this second season did a press launch recently; neither was any biographies or photos of the contestants, let alone any episodic information, even sent out before the show began.
How they think any TV writers, critics or press writing about television would be able to write about this, I don't know.
I asked for contestant photos on Friday after nobody from Nestle, Bar-One or the purported PR company bothered to even get into contact once before the show started. Then I get forwarded a massive file - the passport image with personal details of the journalist the show made a deal with for print coverage and is taking to Zanzibar.
The Bar-One Manhunt as an advertiser-funded production (AFP) comes across as yet another show where those behind-the-scenes seems to have no real idea of how to deal with the press when it comes to a TV show.]
