The bane (and more positively, the delight) of a TV critic's existence is that you get to watch a lot of television. A lot of television.
Not everything is great, not everything is average, and there's always just more and more and more TV watching homework.
But once in a while a true TV gem comes across your part and then it's actually not just work, but also highly enjoyable to watch.
2017 delivered some great shows, and also some guilty pleasures that's not really great, but were still so absorbing and fascinating that I personally couldn't stop watching them.
Surprisingly, two of the shows that I thought showed some of the very best TV work of 2017 were local South African shows, and cooking shows - and I don't usually have a specific personal liking for either.
The fact that both these shows were magnificently produced, in a genre that I didn't expect, and had me enthralled, says a lot of the exceptional work that was put in by the production companies to create world-class television shows.
Here's the top 5 shows of 2017 that honestly made me personally count the days until the next episode:
JAN
(Showmax, VIA, DStv 147)
My
best new show of 2017 on South African television came as a complete and
stunning surprise – the arrestingly beautiful fly-on-the-wall docuseries
profiling South Africa’s Michelin-star chef Jan-Hendrik van der Westhuizen at his Nice restaurant in France and
beyond.
Visually akin to the Netflix series Chef’s Table,
JAN is by far the most breath-takingly beautiful show that was seen on SA
television in 2017.
Co-produced and available on Naspers' streaming
service Showmax, the other surprise was its linear TV channel partner, VIA
(DStv 147) where JAN definitely ranks as the channel's most sumptuously shot
show ever among a channel offering of more down-to-earth lifestyle shows.
Produced
by Brainwave productions and boasting the best production values and stellar
attention to detail, lighting, camerawork, editing and a casting coup in terms
of Jan who finally relented to being filmed, the show is a mesmerisingly
beautiful and immersive work of art.
JAN
is in Afrikaans, English, French and Italian but has English subtitles making
it universally watchable.
Koekedoortjie
(kykNET, DStv 144)
If
cum laude master class film students did a vanity project, Koekedoortjie would
be it.
Totally unexpected, this Afrikaans spin-off version for kids of the
Afrikaans baking show Koekedoor was painful to watch – painful due to the
delicate filming finesse and the production's attention to detail that made
this show an utter wonder to behold.
It
was, unexpectedly, my best TV show of 2017 (until JAN came along).
Magical with
a beautiful set, superb lighting, camera work, music and editing and filmed in
Cape Town by Homebrew Films, the meticulously crafted show is not just
enjoyable – it's technically as far as TV goes, close to flawless.
It's a total TV
jewel, that, like Harry Potter, shouldn't be able to exist and be do-able in
the South African TV universe, yet does.
The
Wedding Bashers (M-Net, DStv 101)
Viewers
came for the weddings but stayed for the cringe (and the delicious snark).
The Wedding Bashers on M-Net is yet
another show that tops my list of TV for 2017 and that gave no clues that it would
become utterly must-watch TV.
Move along Housewives – the wedding crashers Zavion Kotze, Siba Mtongana, Cindy Nell-Roberts and Denise Zimba were
over-the-top wonderful in this locally-produced new show from [SIC]
Entertainment.
Filmed over many months so as to wait for when they
could all attend and for perfectly suited weddings (the good, the bad, the
superhero and the totally ri-di-cu-lous!), you only need to watch one minute to
be captivated by the awe-inspiring put-downs and compliments of the judging
foursome – especially that real-life wedding planner Zavion Kotze.
Who knew that The Wedding Bashers would turn out great
as a local show? Totally 2017's most irresistible guilty pleasure.
By the way, Our Perfect Wedding on Mzansi Magic
(DStv 161) isn't a new show but if you don't want to be trapped and totally
sucked in, don't even watch a minute as the highly addictive show continues to
find wedding people you never knew you wanted to sit and stare and shake your
head at!
Shadowhunters (Netflix)
Why I'm watching Shadowhunters I don’t know.
I’m not
the demo. But in a post Gossip Girl, post Vampire Diaries world, I need my
fantasy show with beautiful young people who are actually werewolves, vampires,
fairies, and human-angel demon hunters with a lot of angst.
And did I mention …
they're beautiful.
Literally obsessed, I spent a big chunk of 2017 like that one cat meme typing furiously on the keyboard, refreshing,
refreshing, refreshing and waiting for the next episode to drop on Netflix
after its weekly broadcast in America.
Who wants to be a Jedi when you can be
someone's Parabatai?
State of America with Kate Bolduan (CNN
International, DStv 401)
I'm sure I completely hate this show. In capital
HATE letters.
And yet … yet I watch it … Every. Single. Day. As in every weeknight
evening.
Why? Obviously something is wrong with me. Or
something has gone wrong with America.
Motor-mouth Kate Bolduan moderates a daily panel
around her transparent perspex desk, hardly gives the "panelist" a chance to
talk and to discuss the daily dramas of America’s president Donald Trump.
Oh wait – now I know why I'm addicted to this
show.
As America's presidency and politics went completely
off the rails in 2017 and the White House internal drama turned into the
biggest real-life reality show ever, State of America is where I've caught up
with the day's "Trump Show" that was and that constantly seems more surreal, unreal and
shocking that anything Aaron Sorkin could ever dream up for The West Wing.
By a Friday, Monday on this show (although it gives
a daily count-on) seems like months away as Kate and cohorts discuss all the
day's lurid headline-grabbing Trump-details.
It is true trainwreck television, and Kate who is with
child has banned the word "pivot" but it is can't-look-away trainwreck
television.
Watch it, but don't say you haven't been warned – you will lose 5
half hours per week and wonder why, but be completely unable to stop.
