This week, watching the episodes for review purposes of a brand-new, English-language, local South African TV series filmed in KwaZulu-Natal, I suddenly had to think about what I was actually - and unconsciously - constantly being presented with, making me wonder if the time hasn't come for South Africa to come up with a kind of Bechdel Test for diversity in and on South African television.
"Created" for film, the Bechdel Test measures and asks questions about the representation (and actually under-representation) of specifically women in film.
A film passes the gender diversity Bechdel Test if it features at least two women who talk to each other and talk about something other than a man. Easy? Actually not that easy.
The New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis in January 2016 went further and suggested the DuVernay Test, asking whether an American film has black characters and other minorities with fully-realised lives "rather than serve as scenery in white stories".
Cue January 2019 - 2019! - and the first new locally-produced South African drama series of the year has scene upon close-cropped scene of two white people, talking about another white person, with people of colour forming part of the "supporting" cast.
Of course it's not unique. The same goes for virtually every other drama series and local prime time soap, from Generations on SABC1 to Getroud met Rugby on kykNET (DStv 144).
That's the casting, those are the scripts, and that leads to more of the same characters who are rarely depicted within a show as really ever interacting with more than one or two characters who are and look different from them.
If you actually think about and carefully deconstruct it, South African television is doing one hell of a job keeping and depicting South African viewers in homogenous bubbles; bubble enclaves of televised safety where the majority of characters - despite surface-level differences - all act and look the same.
It's also presumably why an inter-racial kiss ("oooh!") in prime time on South African television in 2019 - like what happened two weeks ago with 7de Laan on SABC2 - still somehow elicits complaints and lead to hyped-up reports, breathlessly short on substance, about upset viewers who are given undeserved attention.
What is South Africa'a scripted television-at-large doing - really doing - to not just mirror South African society but to showcase and promote real-world and aspirational racial diversity and inclusivity?
Local television shows, doggedly chasing after broadly-defined demos, seem rigidly set on giving their perceived audience just "them", instead of really challenging viewers and taking them along on a truly representative and much broader racially-integrated TV thrill-ride.
How many episodes of scripted South African TV shows in prime time will pass the test, or a type of test, where two people of different races are main characters and talk to each other? And even further: Talk not because they're in conflict with each other, and are not talking with each other about or because of conflict with another character?
It's worrying and depressing that local morning breakfast shows with their "one of each" approach, and even local reality shows - like for instance the BBC's reality competition show Come Dine with Me SA returning to BBC Brit (DStv 120) - features more and are showcasing more real diversity than found in local scripted soaps and drama series.
In 2019 South African local TV drama feels like it still hasn't moved on much from doing 1992 Melrose Place type television where the bulk of characters in a particular show are all the same, with one or two from another race sprinkled in, maybe one who is different, and one who is quirky - and then calling it transformed and diverse.
If South African dramatic TV series don't progress, don't break out of the sameness, keep mollycoddling and don't truly start to challenge the/their audiences, how will we ever get to a point where it becomes possible to tell better stories?
