by Thinus Ferreira
SABC3 is no longer replacing the 2-month gap between the second season and the start of the third season of its local telenovela The Estate with a rebroadcast of SABC1's Family Secrets from today, but will now be showing repackaged episodes of the first two seasons of The Estate, retitled as The Estate Rewind, from Monday evening.
The third season of The Estate was supposed to continue seamlessly on S3 after the end of the second season which was this past Friday but issues around the recommissioning process meant there will now be a gap of just over two months before viewers will see new episodes of the ratings-challenged show.
The debut of the third season of The Estate which S3 originally announced as 1 July has now also been brought slightly forward with the first new episode of the Clive Morris Productions show that will now start on 20 June in the tough timeslot of 19:00.
SABC3 initially planned to fill The Estate's timeslot with a rebroadcast of the SABC1 series Family Secrets with Khanyi Mbau, Katlego Danke, Vusi Kunene and Robert Whitehead from 18 April.
That has now changed and Family Secrets will now start on S3 on 16 May.
For a month from 18 April, SABC3 will now show The Estate Rewind - repackaged episodes from the first two seasons, showing the major plot points of the story so far.
"The Estate Rewind episodes will explore the subject
of land reform, identity, and historical disempowerment. It will give the
viewers a teaser of what to expect in The Estate season 3, which is set to
return on 20 June
2022," S3 says.
Pat van Heerden, SABC3 channel head says "The Estate Rewind is our time to get up close to
the world of our story. It is a time for
us to contemplate the lines between reality and fiction – and how sometimes
fictional daily drama can give us acute truths about the real world".
The Estate, revolving around the dual rich/poor communities of an exclusive housing development has had a troubled production and viewership history since its debut a year ago in April 2021 as an Isidingo prime time replacement.
The Estate has been struggling severely to hook eyeballs and with anaemic ratings slipping lower, the SABC decided to rebroadcast the first season during prime time on sister channel SABC1 in 2021 to try and lure more viewers to the second season on S3.
The Estate made its debut on SABC3 in April 2021 with disappointing ratings that kept worsening, mostly due to damage suffered by the success of e.tv's House of Zwide in the same death-zone 19:00-timeslot.
The Estate only pulled 352 741 viewers at most during prime time on S3 during March 2022.
Last year the cast and crew of The Estate went unpaid for months with several broken promises of payment and with the SABC at the time saying it had "great concern" about the issue.
Clive Morris Productions told cast and crew in late-2021 that their payments can't be made because of "delayed payment from the SABC", but the SABC said that it had paid the company.
