Adventurous dating reality show, The Longest Date, coming to SABC3, looking for single, romantic contestants.

A branded new adventurous dating reality show, The Longest Date, produced by Brandgen, is coming to SABC3 and is now looking for contestants to partake in heart-racing outdoor activities set in the Mpumalanga province.

Chris Jaftha will be the presenter.

The Longest Date on SABC3 will feature "extreme dating" with 16 contestants, 8 couples, who will spend 14 days in Mpumalanga".

Contestants will partake in abseiling, whitewater rafting, bungee jumping" as they compete against other couples with the winning couple getting R100 000.

Contestants need to be single and older than 25, and the closing date for entries is 31 July 2018.

SABC3 and Top Billing's Presenter Search on 3 returning for a 4th TV turn in May, will once again look for new on-air talent to join the channel's shows.

SABC3 and Top Billing's Presenter Search on 3 will return from May for a 4th time, once again looking to add new South African TV talent to joins shows like Top Billing, Expresso or Afternoon Express.

The Presenter Search on 3 will once again be produced by Tswelopele Productions with the search for a new presenter or presenters to join various SABC3 shows that is taking place to co-incide with the 25th anniversary of the venerable weekly gloss entertainment and lifestyle magazine show Top Billing that started on the SABC in 1992.

Previous seasons of the highly popular Presenter Search on 3 have made bona fide TV stars and celebrities of Simba Mhere and Jonathan Boynton-Lee with thousands of hopefuls who queued across the country in 2010 and in 2012 when it known as My Top Billing Dream.

The last season of Presenter Search on 3 was held in 2015 with the winners who were Zoe Brown who joined Expresso, Danilo Acquisto who joined Afternoon Express and Jade Hubner who joined Top Billing.

The show was however also a star vehicle launching pad for Chris Jaftha who made the Top 5 and was picked up soon afterwards by Top Billing as a presenter as well anyway, and who is currently also the co-presenter of Dancing with the Stars South Africa on M-Net (DStv 101).

Likewise Mishka Patel was picked up to join Tswelopele Productions' weekly Afrikaans magazine show Pasella on SABC2.

The presenter of the new Presenter Search on 3 will include among others Jonathan Boynton-Lee, Ayanda Thabethe and the evergreen Jeannie D.

Contestants will once again be put through their paces in grueling real-life TV challenges before and behind-the-scenes with various presenting tasks taking place in-studio and shot outside on-location to not just test the telegenic mettle of those who want to be on TV but also their adaptability and how they respond to unexpected production curveballs.

Dancing with the Stars SA on M-Net sparkles with a live TV surprise engagement as dance champion Ryan Hammond asks fellow dancer Angelique Allison to marry him.

Sunday's second episode of Dancing with the Stars SA broadcast on M-Net (DStv 101) at 17:00 delivered a live TV surprise engagement on the ballroom dance floor when the professional dancer Ryan Hammond surprised his fellow professional dancer Angelique Allison with a marriage proposal, saying "I want to dance the rest of our lives away".

At the end of Sunday's second episode of the Rapid Blue produced glitter floor format show, a made-for-TV moment happened with Angelique Allison, who was completely in the dark as to what was about to happen to her.

Of course choreographer Jason Gilkison, Dancing with the Stars SA head judge and the show's creative director, was secretly in on the plan and helped to carefully orchestrate the surprise romantic moment.

Following a carefully, and beautifully choreographed group dance number by the professional dancers in Dancing with the Stars SA - all dressed in black capes and hats and white gowns during a big band swing number from Frank Sinatra - Ryan Hammond and Angelique Allison ended up in front seemingly by co-incidence. 

The dance number was choreographed so as to end with Ryan Hammond, already on one knee and with Angelique Allison sitting on his right leg. The couple have been together for 3 years.

Hilariously, at the end of the dance number, co-presenter Chris Jafta was immediately up-close, glitter mic in hand as Ryan just started talking.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Ryan Hammond said - as Angelique got that "look" on her face and made silent eye contact with some of the dancers behind her - "a couple of years ago Angelique told me if I ever propose to her, she'd be wearing a nice dress, and there should be someone taking pictures".

Angelique's hand went to her mouth in shock as Ryan said "I thought it couldn't get bigger than this!" as he took out a small black box and opened it up to reveal a ring inside.

"Baby I love you very much. Will you marry me?" Ryan Hammond asked as Angelique said yes. Then they kissed and the ballroom dome's audience erupted in applause and cheers.

"Listen buddy, you've set the benchmark so high for guys, I think it's unfair what you did because now every single guy has to live up to your expectations," said Chris Jafta.

"It's Valentine's Day, we share the same dreams, and I want to dance the rest of our lives away," said Ryan.

This coming Sunday will be the first opportunity for viewers who have registered at mnet.tv/dwtssavote to vote for the favourite dancers.

Viewers' votes will be combined with the judges' scores to determine which two couples with the lowest scored will have to dance for their survival once more in the Dance-Off.

M-Net will announce the results of each episode on the same night in a special Dancing with the Stars SA live results show at 20:00 every Sunday night after Carte Blanche with the Sunday night blockbuster film starting at 20:30.

REVIEW. A rejuvenated Dancing with the Stars SA on M-Net is true 'Disney-glitter television', a dance-off menagerie filled with colour, strobe lights and beautiful bodies.

"This show should come with a glitter warning," said co-presenter Tracey Lange on Sunday evening - and she was absolutely right - in the revived, rejuvenated and improved Dancing with the Stars SA that took a giant leap forward in techni-colour projection and high definition in the jump of this ballroom dancing series from the SABC to M-Net (DStv 101).

Strictly Come Dancing SA, the title under which the glitter floor format show was known as over the course of 8 seasons on SABC2 and SABC3 was never a bad show. The Rapid Blue produced song-and-dance fest is now just even better as the BBC Worldwide format show transitioned to M-Net under the retitled Dancing with the Stars SA name.

It's now in high definition (HD), the revamped voting process is much improved, and everything has had the "M-Net glitter machine once-over", elevating the show's production values to pay-TV levels for a pay-TV audience, specifically for MultiChoice's highest-tiered DStv Premium subscribers.

With a (first-ever) rooftop ballroom, a live band and lead vocals, projectors casting full-colour images on the dance floor and walls to envelope the dancers and ballroom spectators in dancing diaramas and with a large video wall ensconced under circular arches, Dancing with the Stars SA is finally a South African version sporting pedigree specs similar to its UK and American counterparts.

Dancing with the Stars SA, produced by extremely skilled and veteran producers, clearly must have a bigger budget and it shows in a refinement of basically everything with the result that the M-Net viewer and DStv Premium subscriber get a TV show that's gone from fine as it was economy, to more attentive, better furnished business class.

While eagle-eyed observers would spy some first episode production jitters, brief glimpses of stage-fright and some technical problems that will surely be ironed out as the season rolls along, the show, done live from the top of the Hyde Park Corner shopping centre, shined bright in its first episode on M-Net.

Impacted by some sound problems especially towards the end, Dancing with the Stars SA was a colour and dance Sunday evening TV samba as celebrity and professional dancers entertained in what for the bulk of it felt like a wonderful 2-hour live Grease musical with a waltz and tango thrown in.

The co-presenters Tracey Lange and Chris Jafta are in tandem television jewels. Quite simply they make magical television together.

Not since eNCA's NewsNight with Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti has South African TV had a couple being such a perfect fit in natural charm, backing each other up, imbuing the autocue with just enough of their own personality, and striking the perfect tone in both humour and unaffected delivery.

Whoever found Tracey Lange and Chris Jafta and thought of putting specifically these two together, deserve a mirror ball trophy of their own.

Together the twosome, who have individual experience of presenting TV magazine shows, are not just extremely natural and comfortable on-screen, but become a bigger, even better, and more powerful compound than their individual elements on TV's periodic table.

The four judges are all very likeable but the funny and effervescent judge and choreographer Jason Gilkison is clearly the high EQ head boy in this dance-off menagerie filled with colour, strobe lights and beautiful bodies.

Judge Tebogo Kgobokoe, back from Strictly Come Dancing SA, is clearly going to be the "strict one" and will provide added drama as the scoring reveals of the four judges and the numbers on their scoring paddles already turned into a little mini-drama of its own.

In variety and comedy television, timing is everything. In the first outing of Dancing with the Stars SA the pacing was fine, interrupted by somewhat halfhearted in-show audience applause at certain places but deftly smoothed over by Chris Jafta who at some points were a bit quick in transitioning from judge to judge in eliciting comments but will still adapt to their speaking patterns.

The costumes and set design are top notch, the professional dancers extremely talented, agile and skilled, and the band masterful in the rendition of instantly recognisable hits to accompany the dance acts.

Some camera angles felt oddly missing, as if the majority of cut to's were done from only one or a limited range of direction. Still, it is true "Disney-glitter television" - an immersive, highly entertaining variety TV experience that draws you in and manages to keep you spellbound.

The opening group dance number was explosive and so expansive in scope and filled with so many little details not seen on television, that some viewers would probably wish there were camera drones to capture even more different angles.

Dancing with the Stars SA is perfect TV viewing for Sunday evenings and definitely the most colourful programme in a very literal sense on all of South African television right now.

It's cute like a dog show filled with the same dramatic irony that the beautiful and beautifully dressed things have no idea what they're really in for, is filled with vibey music, and brims with more colours than Crayola.

In a world of Donald Trump, Cape Town running out of water and a lot of other troubling issues, the crystal TV palace of Dancing with the Stars SA on M-Net is a wonderful hidden hideaway, devoid of all life's problems for two hours on Sunday evenings.

Singer Connell Cruise one of the 12 dancing celebrities taking part in M-Net's Dancing with the Stars SA starting 4 February 2018.

Singer Connell Cruise will be one of the 12 dancing celebrities in the glitzy dance floor format show Dancing with the Stars SA that will start on 4 February 2018 on M-Net (DStv 101).

Dancing with the Stars South Africa is produced by Rapid Blue with Chris Jaftha and Tracey Lange as the co-presenters.

Connell Cruise who moved to New York will be back in South Africa and joins the so-far-announced TV presenter Thembisa Mdoda; comedian-actor Frank Opperman; actress Juanita du Plessis; the former Miss South Africa and radio presenter Liesl Laurie; Odessa Swarts who is Wayde van Niekerk's mom; and TV star Zola Nombona.

"I'm equal parts totally excited and slightly terrified about what's to come for me on Dancing with the Stars SA!," says Connell Cruise.

"I'm truly thrilled and honoured to be part of this incredible show and I'll be doing my best to make my wife and all my fans in the country proud."

M-Net reveals Thembisa Mdoda and Frank Opperman as the first 2 of 12 celebrities who will take part in Dancing with the Stars SA from February 2018.

M-Net has announced the former Our Perfect Wedding presenter Thembisa Mdoda on Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) and the veteran drama and comedy actor actor Frank Opperman appearing on kykNET (DStv 144) as the first 2 of 12 celebrities who will be taking part in Dancing with the Stars SA.

Dancing with the Stars SA will start in 2018 on M-Net (DStv 101) and is retitled from the longrunning Strictly Come Dancing SA show that was on SABC3 but discontinued due to a lack of money at the SABC.

The pay-TV broadcaster also announced the starting date for Dancing with the Stars SA, with the glitter floor format show produced by Rapid Blue that will be starting on M-Net on Sunday 4 February 2018.

M-Net licensed the Dancing with the Stars SA format show from BBC Worldwide.

Tracey Lange from kykNET's glamour magazine show Bravo! and Chris Jaftha from SABC3's glamour magazine show Top Billing are the presenters of Dancing with the Stars South Africa.

"I have always wanted to be part of Dancing With The Stars," says Thembisa Mdoda who won the title of Best TV Presenter at the 2017 DStv Mzansi Viewers' Choice Awards.

"In the past, I’d watch the show, practice the steps and give myself 10 out of 10s! I am so excited and can't wait to make new memories."

"Mostly, I'm eager to learn some new steps and to have fun."

Frank Opperman says "some people climb Everest for fun. Some walk to the South Pole for kicks, some people swim the seven oceans for pleasure and some people dance with the stars because they have gone insane!"

Rapid Blue and M-Net chose 12 stars to assemble an eclectic group of celebrity dancing stars all from various different backgrounds who will come from the worlds of acting, comedy and sport.

All 12 are already taking dancing lessons and are practising for the show.

An avalanche of awesome coming your way on Thursday evening, 10 September - let those PVRs hum to try and catch all this new television.

Not even a DStv PVR or DStv Explora is going to help you cope with this - you'll need multiple DStv Explora decoders for the absolute avalanche of TV "homework" happening tomorrow, Thursday 10 September on South African television.

I'm trying to think when last I had to juggle keeping up with, and watching so many shows on one night, which will happen again on Thursday evening. Even if you try and set all the recordings, your technology is going to protest and refuse.

So, difficult choices - which is great! - and a lot of things to watch!

Here's your plethora of Thursday 10 September wanna-watch stuff:

M-Net (DStv 101) has the debut of Power Couple South Africa at 19:30, the brand-new reality show filmed in Cape Town in which 8 couples live in a villa and compete weekly while they try to complete daunting challenges. Afrokaans is producing and the production values look great.

M-Net (DStv 101) has the new second season of The Night Shift starting at 21:30.
If you haven't watched the first season, start watching now - the drama series is great.

Someone is placed on suspension (following the season finale's drama), a new surgeon joins and someone steps down.

Then you want to watch Top Billing on SABC3 at 19:30 to see how Chris Jaftha is doing as the latest new presenter joining the local glamorous entertainment magazine show with his first insert at the Durban Fashion Fair.

Top Billing calls Chris Jaftha a "super stud" but no, he won't be schmodeling at the Fashion Fair himself, but knowing the Top Billing producers' penchant for having the presenters bare their man flesh it probably won't be too long before viewers see this six pack on their screens.

E! Entertainment (DStv 124) has the must-watch Celebrating Joan on Thursday at 21:00, a half hour show presented by her daughter Melissa Rivers, a clip-show celebrating her best and funniest moments one year after her untimely passing.

You will laugh. A lot. See Joan Rivers' bloopers and funniest moments, as well as hilarious interactions with some guests over the years on E!'s Fashion Police, as well as a lot of bleeping when Joan uses her "favourite words" (which can't be said on television.

Just before it at 20:00 on Thursday, E! Entertainment and NBCUniversal Networks International is supposed to start with the very first episode of E! News Special, the the brand-new profile series interviewing local South African personalities.

The first E! News Special is supposed to be on Thursday at 20:00 - although it isn't showing at all on E! and DStv's channel schedule and also not on DStv's electronic programme guide (EPG), so it's not recordable and people won't know it will be on.

Bonang Matheba will be the first profile episode in this show produced by Brainstorm.

Colin McLeod‚ the managing director for emerging markets at NBC Universal International Networks last month said E! is "confident that the profiles of local celebrities will resonate well with our audience" and that the brand-new show will help to make "E! the TV destination for the pop of African culture".

Then History (DStv 186) has a new season (its 25th!) of car show Fifth Gear at 20:30. This episode is special  since Tiff Needell and Vicki Butler-Henderson visit sunny South Africa to drive everything from rally cars to military vehicles.

You'd think A+E Networks UK would make a much bigger fuss about this and actually let people know about it more, but at least now you know.

While BBC Brit (DStv 120) is suddenly showing shockingly old reruns of Top Gear (the second season of years and years ago) after that show's self-destruction earlier this year, Fifth Gear is brand-new.

The new series Expedition Unknown starts on the Travel Channel (DStv 179) at 20:00 on Thursday. The adventurer Josh Gates investigates unsolved iconic stories across the globe. Armed with a degree in archaeology and a passion for travel, Josh Gates begins by uncovering recent developments in the story, then springboards into a fully immersive exploration.

Of course it's way too much to expect that the SABC will ever actually do marketing or any publicity for its stocked with reruns channel SABC Encore (DStv 156) on DStv.

But on Thursday at 20:30 (yes, I'm not kidding) you can watch the first episode of the worthwile heydey local drama John Ross - An African Adventure - the first rebroadcast in many, many years.

In David Lister's highly acclaimed youth series first shown on TV1 in 1987, the British teenager (played by Darrel Robertson) is washed ashore in October 1825 off the coast of Zululand, and is escorted by a small band of Zulu tribesmen as John Ross sets out on foot from Durban to Delagoa Bay. It has 13 episodes.

If you know anything about Star Wars, you'd want to tune in on Thursday to M-Net Movies and Disney's Star Wars pop-up channel on MultiChoice's DStv on channel 109 at 17:55 for more on the dreaded "Order 66".

Order 66 of course is the secret order that was given by Senator Palpatine, who becomes/is the evil Emperor, for the Stormtroopers to assassinate all the Jedi in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

It's a really painful event and moment in the Star Wars narrative, and the fascinating Behind the Scenes featurette gives more background and an explainer of Order 66, what was shown - and not shown but created - for the movie.

Top Billing on SABC3 suddenly adds Presenter Search on 3 contestant Christopher Jaftha as a new male presenter to the magazine show.

Glamour entertainment magazine show Top Billing is adding Christopher Jaftha, known as just Chris to its roster of presenters.

Chris Jaftha, who had won several best looking man awards, has been added to possibly follow in the testosterone filled footsteps of former longtime presenters Michael Mol and Janez Vermeiren.

Chris Jaftha landed a spot in the Top 11 during the reality show Presenter Search on 3 earlier this year on SABC3.

He made it to a place as one of the Top 5 in the competition which saw Jade Hubner win the prize to become the latest Top Billing presenter, with Danilo Acquisto who joined the SABC3 afternoon variety and talk show programme, Afternoon Express.

SABC3 and production company Tswelopele Productions gave no reason as to why Chris Jaftha has suddenly also been added.

The second season of Win a Home on SABC3 which just started on Friday evenings also added two Presenter Search on 3 contestants - Khanya Siyengo and Mishka Patel - although Mishka Patel was unexplicably dumped and removed from all marketing material just before the first episode was broadcast last month.

Chris Jaftha's first insert for Top Billing will be to cover the Durban Fashion Fair this week in the episode of 10 September.

Chris Jaftha lives in Johannesburg and has studied Fine Art at the National School of Arts. He's appeared in several pantomimes and musicals and can currently also be seen in SABC3's musical drama Roer Jou Voete.

Chris Jaftha appeared on Afternoon Express, produced by Cardova, on SABC3 on Monday afternoon so that Bonang Matheba could interview him in a cross-promotion, and asked him what people can expect and how it was filming his first insert.

"It's never as easy as it looks but I've been in the industry a long time now, and I know you need to work hard. With Top Billing and my first insert at the Durban Fashion Fair it was really cool. I worked with a really lovely team. It was so much fun," said Chris Jaftha.