Primedia+ adds JAN Voyage: Italy with chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen from Brainwave Productions as its first original series

by Thinus Ferreira  

Primedia+ has added the travelogue series JAN Voyage: Italy from brainwave Productions and fronted by the South African Michelin star chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen as its first original production. 

The six half-hour episode series is available on Primedia+ on the website as well as on the Primedia+ app for free after registration.

In JAN Voyage: Italy, the South African Michelin star chef travels through various Italian regions by car and train with his four-year old dog, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, named Elizabeth, that he calls "Lizzie".

Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen showcases places ranging from Apricale and Florence to to Parma, Naples and Positano.

Primedia Studios commissioned JAN Voyage: Italy specifically for Primedia+. Brainwave Productions previously produced the series JAN as well as JAN RSVP for Media24's VIA (DStv 147) channel.

"In every encounter with the people behind the food, I find a story of passion, patience and devotion," says Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen.

"It reminds me that food is never just about what's on the plate - it's about the hands, the hearts, and the histories that bring it to life – from the butchers who still wrap their cuts in brown paper with pride to the corner shopkeepers who know every face in the village and the families who've run their cafés for generations, still stirring the same sauces their great-great-grandparents made."

"It reminds me that food is never just about what’s on the plate - it’s about the hands, the hearts, and the histories that bring it to life."

Jan du Plessis, Primedia Studios president, says "We are incredibly honoured to have joined forces with the multiple Safta-winning Brainwave Productions to showcase this stunning show on Primedia+."

"Jan Hendrik brings the Midas touch to everything he does, and JAN Voyage: Italy is a sure-fire recipe for binge-worthy viewing."

Dessert in the desert: Third season of JAN on VIA and Showmax will chronicle the creation of his Klein JAN Kalahari restaurant.

by Thinus Ferreira

The award-winning culinary travelogue series JAN is back for a third season from Thursday at 20:00 on both VIA (DStv 147) and Showmax with the new season that will chronicle the planning, drama, creation and opening night of the Michelin-star chef Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen's new Klein JAN restaurant in the Kalahari desert.

Produced by Brainwaves Productions and filmed mostly in Afrikaans and screened with English subtitles, viewers can get ready for an even more intimate season with the chef who this time traces the recent origin and evolution of an extraordinary idea - to open a restaurant and to serve dessert in a desert with a Khoisan-cuisine inspired menu.

The first two seasons of the beautifully filmed JAN took viewers to Italy and France and charted the chef's journey to Michelin stardom, while the third will take viewers on another breathtakingly beautiful journey to Tswalu Kalahari, the largest private game reserve in South Africa that is the setting for Klein JAN.

Through the course of 8 new episodes, Jan Hendrik takes viewers into his confidence about what a farm boy from Middelburg, whose whimsical fusion of South African cuisine with the finest French cooking has won favour with the world’s most exacting food critics on the French Riviera, dreams of in the enormous silence of the Kalahari desert.

Tswalu Kalahari is operated by the Oppenheimer family and Jan Hendrik's Klein JAN journey began several years ago when Jonathan and Nicky Oppenheimer enjoyed a meal at JAN, Jan-Hendrik's restaurant in Nice that has become the object of pilgrimage for South Africans traveling through the south of France.

This meeting leads to a 100-year old cottage in the proverbial middle of nowhere that would become the logistical and emotional crux of Jan Hendrik's new beginning.

"Beyond people's wildest expectations," is how project architect Adrian Davidson describes the project in the first episode of the third season, which introduces viewers to the reasons that prompted Jan Hendrik to set a table in the desert and his dream of putting the Kalahari on a pedestal where it could be admired by the whole world.

In the second episode, viewers are left in no doubt that Klein JAN was never going to be just another lodge restaurant.

A meeting with the Khoisan, one of the world’s most ancient living cultures, shapes the menu in

unexpected ways and viewers should be prepared for a tug at the heartstrings when Jan Hendrik's

grandmother's coal stove arrives on the farm.

The philosophy behind Klein JAN is to leave the lightest possible footprint while creating a world-class menu that showcases the best of local and indigenous produce – from 3-million-year-old salt

discovered in a salt pan in the middle of the desert, to the extraordinary cheeses made by a wine farmer in the Northern Cape and seen in episode four.

In the 6th episode, Jan Hendrik meets a female farmer as opening day is just a few weeks away, episode 7 captures the day before opening day, and episode 8 is there for the dramatic opening night of Klein JAN as guests are flown in from across South Africa.

TV REVIEW. Season 2 of JAN on VIA is TV tranquillity perfection - possibly the most beautiful show on television that 2020 will possibly plate.

by Thinus Ferreira

The second season of the intimate and incomparable food exploration and travelogue show JAN on VIA (DStv 147) is by far the most singularly beautiful, perfectly-produced television that 2020 will possibly plate.

Like the first season that followed South Africa's Michelin-star chef, Jan-Hendrik van der Westhuizen, and his restaurant in Nice, France, the Afrikaans 12-episode second season with English subtitles pushes the cinematography, music and exploration of scenic European places and fascinating profiles even further. (In the season's last two episodes Jan is in South Africa.)

The first season of JAN won the Golden Horn trophy as Best Variety Show at the National Film and Video Foundation's 13th South African Film and Television Awards (Saftas).

The second season, also produced by Carien Loubser of Brainwave Productions, is utterly astounding television in every audio-visual sense of the word - video-perfection from the carefully-crafted, filmed and edited first frame to the very last.

Watching the second season of JAN, you literally can't believe your eyes.

In this TV love letter to life and what makes life beautiful, Jan and JAN ventures to different places in France and across Europe with a pastoral, yet majestic cinematography style that takes your breath away.

The camera often lingers on Jan - etched inside portrait-like moving frames - as he explains more about the places he's visited, sharing personal anecdotes and then meeting up with creative foodie people from chocolatiers to an Italian pasta mamma in original profiles with stories you've never heard.

While Jan reflects on personal experiences and how it binds into memories, his past and people he love, and while he reveals little-known stories behind the creation of things from champagne to croissants, the show's overwhelming pinnacle of beauty comes in the latter part of episodes when Jan shows off his personal "twist" of a traditional recipe.

In a visual art reveal Jan's incredible food creations come to life as moving art on television. You have never seen anything like this on TV.



A combination of beautifully filmed shots, with a slow-motion edit and with an overlay of sensory perfection in the form of music, will leave you with one question: How does he/they do it?

Moving out of the restaurant this season and into his own kitchen, and seeing Jan roaming across the European countryside and through inner-city cobblestone alleys, makes the second season of JAN even more personal and personally revealing.

This is your funny, world-travelled friend, sharing richly coloured, finely detailed, hilarious and emotional stories - whispered to you over a glass of wine during a long summer lunch or an evening dinner.

Within the context of Covid-19 the second season of JAN gets an unintended, additional layer: The entire season is TV tranquillity at it's extremely very best - a superb, hourly escape into an onion-layered friendship reveal, combined with a travel and food creativity flight-of-fantasy unlike anything else on television.

Without being self-referential, the second season of JAN clearly knows that it is and is offering deluxe premium television.

In a medium where every second counts and is filled to maximum capacity with clutter, JAN is quite overtly not concerned with the ticking of time. The pacing of every single episode reveals that the producers are bringing to television the one thing most shows simply cannot afford: the luxury of time.

Episodes of JAN breathe like very few shows are able to - like a fine wine opened and poured with the first sip only enjoyed after a proper airing and a swivel. Seconds often go by just showing the viewer beautiful scenes and music. No speaking, no explanation, no fake filler required.

JAN's second season is insanely beautiful. In the very best TV way possible.


The season 2 finale (episode 12) of JAN is broadcast on VIA on Monday 20 April 2020 at 20:00.
The box set of JAN season 2 is available on DStv Catch Up on DStv Now until 18 May 2020.
Box sets of JAN season 1 and season 2 are available on Showmax.


ALSO READ: INTERVIEW. The TV director behind the astounding second season of JAN on VIA, Carien Loubser weighs in on the no second takes series, Edith Piaf in Zulu, Paris Ubers driving past and crafting a brand-new ending.

The Afrikaans lifestyle reality show, JAN, on VIA and Showmax following the Michelin-star chef Jan-Hendrik van der Westhuizen in France, renewed for a second season starting in spring-2019.

The Afrikaans lifestyle reality show, JAN, on VIA (DStv 147) and Showmax has been renewed for a second season that will start later this year in spring-2019.

JAN, following the French and European adventures of the South African Michelin-star chef Jan-Hendrik van der Westhuizen who has a restaurant, JAN, in Nice, France, is produced by Carien Loubser of Brainwave Productions.

JAN won a Golden Horn trophy as Best variety show this past Saturday at the National Film and Video Foundation's 13th South African Film and Television Awards. Besides JAN, VIA also won another award for the agricultural show, Nisboere.

"We are proud to have helped share this top-quality Afrikaans content with the world," says Izelle Venter, VIA channel head.

"We are truly thankful to the production teams and the talent who made all four these Safta-nominated shows possible."

The second season of JAN is scheduled to start in the spring of 2019 later this year. In the second season of JAN viewers will get a more in-depth look into his restaurant in Nice, France.

2017's (GREATEST) GUILTY PLEASURES. Here's the top 5 TV shows that were so great this year, that I literally couldn't wait to watch the next episode.

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.