by Thinus Ferreira
Love Island SA on Sunday night made a shockingly embarrassing debut as the worst-ever local TV production in the 35-years of M-Net (DStv 101) by far, with South African television and DStv subscribers who deserve much, much better than Rapid Blue's shamefully shoddy South African adaptation of the ITV Studios format.
The long-awaited debut episode of Love Island South Africa on M-Net was atrocious and unacceptable.
Marred by the biggest mess with any local reality show it has ever done, M-Net must know that it's unacceptably bad since Love Island SA's botched first episode by Monday morning wasn't even made available for viewing on DStv Catch Up.
On a technical level Rapid Blue's Love Island SA is a poorly produced TV flop.
While ITV and M-Net sell images of waves, beaches and words like "Islanders" it's hard to believe that Rapid Blue - the very same company that was responsible for the latest UK and French versions of the same ITV Studios format - is really giving South Africans a very badly lit, badly done pastel-coloured paint-job that looks like a guest house overlooking a vineyard far away from the sea.
Why must M-Net and DStv viewers feel that watching this lacklustre "villa" - from JD Unlimited responsible for set design and built by JDMBuildco with Dewet Meyer as production designer - is worth their time?
It doesn't look remotely aspirational or luxurious and literally comes with dead air.
South African students, if they were to hand in an episode like Love Island SA as a team project at any film school in the country, would fail with nothing that the first episode offered up that is even remotely up to M-Net standards.
It's shocking that MultiChoice and M-Net executives like Yolisa Phahle, Nkateko Mabaso, Jan du Plessis and Kaye-Ann Williams as M-Net's head of local productions saw the first episode of Love Island SA and didn't find it unacceptable for broadcast on DStv and didn't postpone the broadcast to get it up to spec.
If they haven't seen it, and still decided to air it, that is also a big problem.
It's also a problem that Rapid Blue's executive producers Adi de Lancey and Duncan Irvine, series producer Abigail Clark, series director Nadia White, and head of production Kim Thwaites all making Love Island SA are fine with churning out and offering up something so bad that either has budget problems, staffing problems, too few people, or people without basic competencies in their respective audio-visual production fields.
Why are showrunners working on a show they can't execute and properly hold together?
The sound and sound mixing on Love Island SA was terrible and in several instances, there was just silence lasting all throughout the first episode with even a silent credit roll (that contains a litany of mistakes, including wrongly-spelt names). How does this happen?
In some instances, production crew could be heard talking over the Islanders. There was cross-feed of audio channels. Mics overlapping.
Every single person working on sound on Love Island SA deserves to be fired from Jeff Hodd as sound engineer HOD, to Gary Rundle and Gavin Turner as the sound HODs, and David Oosthuizen responsible for the audio final mix, all the way down.
The Love Island SA music done by Kaz-Leigh Staighfill as music coordinator, is terrible. In ITV's Love Island music makes a big part of the show.
Once again: Is Rapid Blue and M-Net too cheap to pay to licence proper, suitable music? Pay for proper music. This is a pay-TV show made for pay-TV subscribers and in addition for DStv Premium subscribers on MultiChoice's top-tier who are paying the highest price for quality content.
The voice-over work done by Warren Robertson is absolutely terrible and he needs to be replaced, as well as the scriptwriter for his narration, Melt Sieberhagen.
The voice-over narrating is likewise one of the crucial ingredients of the secret potion that makes Love Island "work" - it needs to be funny and sound spontaneous and be tongue-in-cheek.
It's hugely ironic that Rapid Blue also produces Come Dine with Me SA on BBC Brit that employs Dave Lamb who is also doing the voice-overs for the British version - so clearly M-Net and Rapid Blue are aware of how it could be done and that it is possible to do it correctly. Warren Robertson doesn't sound right and doesn't sound funny.
Also, there is nothing wrong with your TV screen dear viewer. It's the camera quality of the actual cameras used by Love Island SA that is abhorrent. Grandma with her Nokia 3310 and Shoprite's CCTV camera system capture better visuals.
The people in charge of editing should also be fired. Students learning basic editing, do better editing with PicsArt on their YouTube channels with proper transitions using free online software.
Multiple editors are listed as working on Love Island SA, ranging from Jacques le Roux as senior story editor to senior editors Alwyn de Bruyn, Daniel Modisakeng, Eckhard Groenwald, Graeme Hodge, Julian Thomas, Nicholette Nolte, Samantha Marais and Tumelo Ditshego.
Why is the Love Island SA lighting done by Mauritz Neethling as lighting director and designer with lighting operators Hendrik Abraham Avenant and Mathai Lucky Lwele as lighting operators, so bad?
It's supposed to be bright and sunny and to give an atmosphere of holiday and a carefree competition. This is filmed in South Africa in late summer.
Who is asleep on grading and colour correction under Nicci van Niekerk as post-production supervisor? Love Island SA looks grey and dull like the washing TV laundry commercials use for the "before" clothes before they turn sparkling white.
And speaking of white - yes the show is aimed at the M-Net channel's audience and its specific target demo that does skew white and female but that isn't an excuse for it to be almost another lily-white version of kykNET's Boer Soek a Vrou.
A reality show like Love Island SA is still anchored and done in South Africa and must reflect at least a modicum of "reality" and "South Africa".
It's beyond comprehension that Rapid Blue would foist an unrepresentative cast and the worst production values for a local reality show ever seen on M-Net, on premium pay-TV subscribers and in prime time, and think that nobody would notice anything or that paying DStv subscribers would be fine with it.
How does ITV Studios sign off on a localised brand extension that is so bad and so damaging to its format and how does M-Net put something on the airwaves that is so cringe-worthy terrible?
With 6 weeks left of Love South Africa, M-Net and Rapid Blue need to make drastic and urgent changes and improvements because the standard and quality of Love Island SA make it look like someone is filming a primary school community theatre performance with a torch on a cellphone.
Rapid Blue and M-Net need to fix Love Island SA and fix it fast.