For a book such as
Carte Blanche 25 Years - The Stories Behind the Stories about which
George Mazarakis, the executive producer of the long running M-Net investigative magazine show, writes in the foreword "is not an academic textbook on how to make television; it is rather, simply, a celebration of 25 years of storytelling," I wanted more.
Carte Blanche 25 Years - The Stories Behind the Stories written and compiled by
Jessica Pitchford, the managing editor of the show, and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers doesn't compare that well with similar books in this genre (which I enjoy tremendously and collect: books about television and the TV industry and TV shows).
But perhaps doing a better celebration of
Carte Blanche in paperback would have made it too prohibitively expensive. Or it might be deemed too risque being carte blanche about
Carte Blanche. Who knows.
Next to books such as
Days of Our Lives - The True Story of One Family's Dream and the Untold History of Days of Our Lives,
Producer: Lessons Shared from 30 Years in Television from
Wendy Walker who was the executive producer of
Larry King Live,
Bill Carter's
Desperate Networks,
The Oprah Winfrey Show - Reflections on an American Legacy - even
e.tv - The first 10 Years - and quite a few others alongside which
Carte Blanche 25 Years will find a place on my library shelf, it seems and reads like a tad too light and superficial.
Would a little multimedia CD-ROM such as which came with the book
E! True Hollywood Story to illustrate some highlights over the years, to show some bloopers, sets and set changes, hair over the years and openings have made this product that much more expensive?
The few high gloss colour pictures in the middle of
Carte Blanche 25 Years is of an odd selection (and too few) - and probably the most noteworthy photo, the one of all the
Carte Blanche presenters since the start of the show, curiously couldn't be bothered to do a photo inset of
Manu Padayachee or
Annika Larsen or even have a caption with everyone's names.
There's some - but sadly too few - jewels between the pages of
Carte Blanche 25 Years offering titbits of revelations:
Derek Watts was not the producers' first choice as one of the anchors. And for budgetary reasons
Carte Blanche shoots are usually confined to two days and a single camera.
And how about this? That M-Net eventually wanted to do
Carte Blanche live every night with news. In January 2000, the first live broadcast of the new millennium for
Carte Blanche kicked off from a new set - an L-shaped desk with space for guests. M-Net had been toying with the idea of
Carte Blanche going live with news every night, so the set was chosen with that in mind, although it never happened.
Lunch is "about as far" as
Carte Blanche will go in terms of paying for stories - such as a bunny chow in a hotel last year for
Bruno Pelizzari after he and
Debbie Calitz were released by Somali pirates.
Devi Sankaree Govender is told by passers-by that she looks taller on television.
Or that its an "endless source of amusement" at
Carte Blanche that Cape Town producer Liz Fish is obsessed with the ocean (and helped the show to win many accolades).
And then there's this too true journalism bon mot: "
Carte Blanche lawyers Dario Milo and Emma Sadleir got involved. They were eager to avoid an interdict, which is costly, time-consuming and often dependent on which side of bed the presiding judge has emerged."
If you want real answers or introspection, real engrossing reading as to what really happened behind the stories, you're out of luck with
Carte Blanche 25 Years although the book's back cover promises "an unabashed look at what goes on behind the scenes of the nation's longest-running current affairs show".
It doesn't really provide that at all.
Why did
Ruda Landman really leave
Carte Blanche in June 2007? How did presenter
Manu Padayachee - in life before he died a functioning alcoholic - really impact on the production of the show? How did
Ruda Landman really feel and what led up to it behind-the-scenes when she broke down in tears, reached out and hugged a sexually abused child and which made for an iconic TV moment?
How did
George Mazarakis and the team feel about (being forced?) to have
Carte Blanche interview
Big Brother SA contestants evicted from the tawdry reality show Sunday after Sunday simply because it was on M-Net? Gold Reef City?
What about the one-pre-taped Sunday introduction
Carte Blanche did which went horribly wrong (due to a real-life shocking news event) and which the producers afterwards vowed to never do again? Why did the show experiment with an op-ed commentator for a while?
None of that's included which would have made for true fascinating reading.
How did the spin-offs
Carte Blanche Medical and
Carte Blanche Consumer in 2010 impact on the workload and production stress and what happened before, during and after the cancellation news of these shows from M-Net?
(The closest the book comes to any of it is to say on page 225 that
Carte Blanche Consumer was "a high-maintenance show because each step of the process had to be filmed reality-style and the cases carefully chosen.")
What are some production logistics, close shaves and mini miracles which took place behind some extraordinary and not so extraordinary
Carte Blanche stories over the years which suddenly made all the difference?
None of these things and a myriad more stories which true, real fans of
Carte Blanche have some knowledge of but would have liked to read about as part of fuller, rounded out stories, are ever talked about or mentioned in the book.
Yet that is what would have made
Carte Blanche 25 Years a real page turner and keepsake book such as
Star Trek The Next Generation Companion in which the producers wonderfully were willing to fully dish on the good and the bad without sacrificing any of the stature of the show.
Chapter 11 The "Mama Jackie: The Angel of Soweto" in
Carte Blanche - 25 Years is in my estimation the best chapter of
Carte Blanche 25 Years - a little inkling of what the book, merely filled with shortish narrative anecdotes of certain stories, could have been and should have been.
This chapter tells more and provides more glimpses of the producers and presenters as they realise a con story after doing multiple positive profile stories about Mama Jackie, and how gradually the show is forced to adjust its coverage over time.
Derek Watts' recollections of covering
Mark Shuttleworth's launch into space similarly provides what would have made this book excellent. How
Derek Watts had to jet back to South Africa with footage, how producers worked overtime in the edit suite and how a jet lagged
Derek Watts showed how to find key moments out of 34 hours of video for a 20 minute story.
Don't expect real revelations from the production team at
Carte Blanche. The book is more of an oral historiography as told by certain producers and penned down by
Jessica Pitchford.
If you really like the show,
Carte Blanche 25 Years is sadly not going to enhance it. It's a nice to have, but overall boring - venturing where other books celebrating true TV milestones have gone before bigger and much better.
