TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV reports and articles to read - 26 February 2021.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:    

■ Netflix has renewed the Spanish youth series ELITE about the Lax Encinas high schoolers has been renewed for a 5th season before the start of season 4.

■ The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) that votes for the Golden Globes and that has no black members now says that it has an "action plan" to specifically recruit black members.

■ Original shows give Netflix a big edge in the video streaming wars.

■ The Walt Disney Company's new Star streaming service add-on - the "international Hulu" - is leaving international buyers,like for instance MultiChoice and M-Net - in the lurch.

Disney is creating massive confusion and big questions for its international partners making use of its content distribution system for shows ... that are and will dry up.

■ When is a plus actually a minus when it comes to naming your video streaming services?

An idea that seemed like a real plus when video streaming was newer, has now become a cliché.

■ Why Paramount+ is proof that we've hit peak video streaming.

In an era of way, way too much TV, things get lost.

■ The showrunner of Snowpiercer on Netflix talks about keeping trains running amid Covid-19 and dealing with superfans.

■ 10 things TV should stop doing right now.

From reboots and spinoffs to streaming services - enough already!

■ Traditional pay-TV subscribers are spending as much money on video streaming services as cord-cutters who have ended their satellite-TV subscriptions.

■ New video streaming services are breathing new life into old TV classics.

■ Netflix wants to start shifting from quantity to quality content as it lays out a vision where it no longer has all the content, but the best content.

■ The growing, big struggle to try and place ratings on streaming shows.

■ 60% of traditional pay-TV subscribers would love to watch a show on a video streaming service.

■ Will political documentary survive the age of Netflix?

The struggle to speak truth to power in the age of streaming.

TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read - 22 July 2020.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ A dramatic TV change is coming later in 2020 that MultiChoice, M-Net and all the other big global broadcasters are still completely silent about:
When the next American TV season is supposed to start around September 2020, TV's line-up of new shows and series are going to look a lot different and will be smaller because of paused production during the Covid-19 pandemic. There isn't content. There aren't new films.


■ The fakery around "hit content" on Netflix (and Showmax).
Netflix announces most-watched programming without providing any viewership numbers, while "views" actually include people who possibly watched as little as just 2 minutes of something. Real viewers should be people who've watched everything of something.


■ Toxic Tucker Carlson of FOX News (StarSat 261) claims the New York Times is working on a report about him that will "hurt his family".

■ Watching repeats: Why the past is the future of your TV schedule (psst ... corona).
 - because the moment has finally come: We have run out of TV. And another: We're going to run out of TV.

■ Why resuming TV and film production has gotten so complicated.

■ MultiChoice Nigeria raises the alarm after a Covid-19 positive customer has been inside its Ibadan customer care branch,


■ Subscription TV viewers soar during Covid-19 lockdown in Australia - traditional pay-TV including video streaming services.
- With Covid-19 also causing a pay-TV surge in Germany as well.


■ Kenya TV star Charles Bukeko (58) known for his role as Papa Shirandula dead because of Covid-19.
- Jeff Koinange, veteran TV reporter for Citizen TV in Kenya also tests positive for Covid-19. And Citizen TV's reporter Stephen Letoo also tested positive for Covid-19.


■ Newzroom Afrika (DStv 405) TV reporter Athi Mthongana on her experience of testing positive for Covid-19 and healing.

■ Cancel culture: Why Netflix keeps binning popular TV shows.

■ New cast members for season 4 of ELITE on Netflix.

■ Canada's film and TV industry is really white - and there are a lot of reasons for this.

■ Traditional pay-TV's death spiral.

■ It's outrageous that MultiChoice is asking pensioners to pay R800.

■ Reality star Tamar Braxton sent TV channel bosses saying they made her suicidal.

TV CRITIC's NOTEBOOK. South Africa's Blood & Water teen angst drama from Gambit Films looks like it's another rip-off from Netflix's Spanish series ELITE using The Kissing Booth's production design values.

by Thinus Ferreira

The teaser trailer for the angst-filled, 8-episode South African teen drama series Blood & Water coming to Netflix gives the terribly bad first impression that it's yet another shallow-looking, rip-off of the Spanish series ELITE - making use of the same-lame production design values of Netflix's The Kissing Booth teen romcom movie that was also filmed in Cape Town.

In my opinion local teen dramas like The Girl from St Agnes and Blood & Water don't need to be high art. It's mostly entertainment fluff.

Yet, when they're so extremely derivative in nature that they do little to nothing to grow, expand and to improve South Africa's TV industry or standing of the local industry in the world, it's well ... bad.

The trope-filled and disappointing Queen Sono came and went on Netflix and accomplished little besides being a footnote as "the first South African Netflix Original".

It failed to move the needle forward in terms of showing what (more) South Africa is capable of, but on another platform in the way that The Crown does for the United Kingdom, Osmosis did for France, 3% did for Brazil or India's incredibly impressive first Netflix original Sacred Games.

Meanwhile the high school set drama series Grassroots on 1Magic (DStv 103) - that yes, also had a swimming pool feature prominently - has been great with a fantastic first season, a suspense-filled, cliffhanger ending, and completely embodies what a Netflix or Showmax series should be.

The story and characters go beyond what has been on television up to now. Grassroots, produced by Clive Morris Productions, expands the teen drama series within the South African context with new themes, topics, plot and characters.

Spain's ELITE did the same and, through Netflix, advanced that country's industry and what the world sees Spain as being capable of producing in terms of television.

But back to Netflix's stale-on-arrival Blood & Water that from the outset even in terms of how the trailer has been cut, looks extremely unoriginal. The main character needs help to find out whether the star of the school's swimming team is really her long-lost sister who was abducted at birth.

It all comes across as very Days of Our UCT Lives - Gossip Girl on Upper Campus edition especially after Quinton van der Burgh did the scripted "reality" series The Shores which was followed up by a second season renamed Clifton Shores.

So let's analyze:

Where have you've heard - or seen - any of these tired TV tropes before?

The outsider teenager - mostly a bookish, studious girl - gets dropped into the world of the clique-ey, rich elite kids who initially don't want anything to do with him/her.

There's the private school that has a pool - the setting of a mystery.

The private kids are beautiful from the outside but ugly from the inside.

The private kids all hide deep, dark secrets.

The private kids do parties with alcohol at mansions or wealthy homes, while the poor kids who are outsiders, somehow get access or attend at the mansion where then bad things happen, including sex that is actually rape.

How about the University of Cape Town as a backdrop for a fancy-schmancy elite school; or Camps Bay as "the beach" where the rich hang out.

Then there is always the "mystery" - someone is either dead or missing, or has a secret family link with someone else in the story. Someone who is not part of of the rich, privileged ones, is on a quest to search and solve the secret(s).

Of course there are teenagers who are smoking - some adults too ... because we have to somehow prove or emphasize that Netflix and Showmax ain't SABC1 Simunye y'all.

And don't forget preppy school blazers, kids wearing headphones, teachers with secrets, outsiders becoming insiders but "losing themselves", snobbish kids forced to eventually see the error of their ways (usually through public shaming), and the silly "bestie" who is in on the main character's secret and the one who comes up with some plan.

Surprise! Someone is usually revealed to be bisexual.

Cue Blood & Water from Gambit Films - filmed in Cape Town and making use of Camps Bay, Cape Town mansions and the University of Cape Town (UCT) that in this one is subbing as Parkhurst College.

Blood & Water, visually and story wise apparently leans heavily in terms of story, characters and production design elements on where Netflix's ELITE, Showmax's The Girl from St Agnes, and even Netflix's teen romcom The Kissing Booth have all gone before.

Hopefully, hopefully Blood & Water isn't yet another yawn-inducing Gossip Girl retread rip-off of the excellent ELITE or the copy-and-paste lookalike The Girl from St Agnes that was already hugely problematic for its similarities to ELITE.

Add into the mix the seen-before production design elements from The Kissing Booth that now appear in Blood & Water and it leaves very little that inspires confidence that the Gambit Films show is going to be very original. Already we've seen:


The outsider will once again be depicted on the steps and literally being pushed around:
Blood & Water

ELITE:

The Kissing Booth:

Pools of trouble - the pool is yet again the scene of a central mystery:
Blood & Water:

ELITE:

Camps Bay is where the kiddies hang out:
Blood & Water:

The Kissing Booth:

Party mansion:
Blood & Water:

The Kissing Booth:

Hot jocks always wear headphones, in school, like so:
Blood & Water:

ELITE:

The preppy rich blonde girl on the left from ELITE has money but a lot of personal problems. The same will very likely be the case for the preppy rich blonde girl, with a really very bad wig on, on the right from Blood & Water:

Speaking of which, the girl with the very bad wig on is Greteli Fincham who plays Greece van Rensburg. She's will be in The Kissing Booth 2 as well. And does the publicity photo pose not remind you of ... oh yes:

At least Shamilla Miller isn't scared of getting typecast. After she was Jenna Galloway from The Girl from St. Agnes on MultiChoice's Showmax she puts on a new red school blazer to now be Riley Morgan in Blood & Water, again playing a private high school bestie:

It's all so much the same, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you had seen Blood & Water like two years ago already and just skip over it all.


ALSO READ: SPOILER ALERT. Here are some of the similarities between The Girl from St. Agnes on Showmax, and ELITE on Netflix.

SPOILER ALERT. Here are some of the similarities between The Girl from St. Agnes on Showmax, and ELITE on Netflix.

The teen drama murder mystery series ELITE on Netflix, and the just-released new local drama series, The Girl from St. Agnes, on Showmax co-incidentally share some remarkable similarities.

Revealing some of the similarities are spoilers, so click away now if you plan on watching the one or the other, or both.




Netflix: A girl at a private school is killed and over 8 episodes the person who did it is revealed in the final episode.
Showmax: A girl at a private school is killed and over 8 episodes the person who did it is revealed in the final episode.

Netflix: Body of the victim is discovered during the evening of the school dance, creating chaos.
Showmax: Body of the victim is discovered during the evening of the school dance, creating chaos.

Netflix: Theft of a watch forms an integral part of the plot.
Showmax: Theft of a watch forms an integral part of the plot.

Netflix: Nudity involves showing a man's behind and female breasts.
Showmax: Nudity involves showing a man's behind and female breasts.

Netflix: Surprise! Bisexual.
Showmax: Surprise! Bisexual.

Netflix: The person responsible is the best friend of the victim's brother.
Showmax: The person responsible is the best friend of the victim.

Netflix: In the end, the police are led to believe that the one character's brother (who didn't kill) is guilty of a crime; he becomes the fall guy.
Showmax: In the end, the police are led to believe that the one character's brother (who didn't kill) is guilty of a crime; he becomes the fall guy.

Netflix: In the end the police don't arrest the person responsible for the death but someone else.
Showmax: In the end the police don't arrest the person responsible for the death but someone else.

Netflix: Troubled relationship: Privileged, rich white boy intends to rape poor girl but falls in love with her.
Showmax: Troubled relationship: Privileged, rich white boy intends to rape poor girl (and does) but also loves her.

Netflix: "We all failed her."
Showmax: "We all failed her."

Netflix: Surprise! Student is the principal's son.
Showmax: Surprise! Student is the principal's daughter.

Netflix: The character who knows who killed the victim, suddenly ends up protecting that person.
Showmax: The character who knows who killed the victim, suddenly ends up protecting that person.

Netflix: Character who died, previously suffered statutory rape.
Showmax: Character who died, previously suffered statutory rape.

Netflix: Depicts smoking on-screen, including kids.
Showmax: Depicts smoking on-screen, including kids.

Netflix: In the final minutes of the last episode someone talks someone down from a jumping suicide.
Showmax: In the final minutes of the last episode someone talks someone down from a jumping suicide.


There are more; perhaps watch both for yourself and see which ones you spot.

REVIEW. A girl at a private school is murdered and everyone's a suspect in the teen murder mystery drama series ELITE on Netflix that's a terrific guilty pleasure.

A girl at a private school for rich kids where life revolves around appearances is murdered and everyone, pupils and adults, become suspects - all of them with hidden lives and secret motivations - in the brilliant and utterly addictive 8-episode teen drama series ELITE on Netflix. 

Imagine a fusion of How to Get Away with Murder with Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars with an incredible pace and narrative technique on steroids, and then you get ELITE.

Making for utterly compulsive viewing, ELITE revolves around a murder at the Las Encinas private high school in Spain, and with the victim's body discovered on the evening of a school dance that gets disrupted.

Everyone's backstories, motives and secrets are then slowly/quickly being revealed through time flashes in the first and subsequent episodes.

ELITE isn't a guilty pleasure, it's a pleasure, stringing you along with a can't-guess whodunnit and interesting and well fleshed-out characters who you want to learn more of and how they're all surprisingly connected. This happens through gasp-inducing but plausible back flashes revealing more and more of the overall mystery.

ELITE that became available on Netflix in October 2018 is an irresistible teen murder mystery and while it's originally in Spanish, you can watch with English subtitles, or switch to the well-done English-dubbed soundtrack that's not "telenovela English" at all. You won't focus on how they talk, you'll be spellbound by what they're doing.

Themes and topics spanning privilege, wealth, entitlement, race, different cultures, power, sex, drug use and addiction, sexual orientation and being gay, young love and romance, body issues and self-esteem, teen pregnancy, trust and family dysfunction, are all incredibly cleverly interwoven in ELITE to create a truly binge-worthy series with twists, jaw-dropping revelations, beautiful people and an overall murder mystery that hooks you and that you want to find the answer to.

While the teenagers go to school, all snark at each other (initially) and viewers follow their social media antics and see their cellphone messages, tagging along on their social doesn't make ELITE (feel) superficial.

In fact, it functionally deepens the narrative in a smart way, organically drawing you in even further into their hyper-connected, yet desperate, isolated, often anxiety-stricken world. 

Everyone suffers from insecurities - even those initially doing the bullying including the teen queen - although all the rich kids, and now the new kids, are surrounded by a world of excess. 

Even the poor kids and those always-do-the-right-thing teenagers who you initially think are heroes have hidden prejudices and desires that eventually surface. Another cool thing about ELITE is that you won't be able to guess the killer. 

You literally have to watch every episode (not a chore) with the well-structured story that switches from locker rooms and bedrooms to parties and classrooms. ELITE feels as if you're really in a school and in these preppy teenagers' challenging, decadent, aspirational and painful lives.

The teenage girl who gets killed in ELITE is revealed in the first episode but because of back flashes is seen throughout the show, including the final episode containing the actual murder scene and revealing the killer.

Whereas in most teen drama series the characters often remain one-dimensional with little real depth - they're chosen to represent a stereotype and to fit tropes like "the school jock", the "school nerd", the "prom queen", the "ethnic outsider" - ELITE smartly builds in great character development as it unfolds for each of the characters.

Parallel to that runs a very layered story; one that moves briskly and one that doesn't conform to the tropes you know. 

What makes ELITE a joy to watch is that it constantly goes where you didn't think it would go, or even thought of that it could go - it deliciously plays with the teen drama genre but still feels very grounded and real.

Once you've watched all 8 episodes of ELITE, take a minute to think back to where they all initially started and what your impressions were of them, and then what you think of them individually at the end.. Who do you like now? Who do you feel for now?

Why not mention any of the well-acted, well-cast, characters in ELITE and who they are? That would already spoil some of the viewing fun. Get to ELITE's school pool and just dive right in. It's a must-do binge-watch assignment that you will enjoy finishing.


ALSO READ: REVIEW. A girl at a private school is murdered and everyone's a suspect in the teen murder mystery drama series The Girl from St. Agnes on Showmax that's okay-ish but ultimately disappointing.

'Twas the day before Christmas, so here are 10 really great streaming TV series to binge-watch during the holiday period.

'Twas the day before Christmas, so here are 10 TV shows on Netflix, Showmax, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and DStv Now that you can stream watch and will definitely enjoy during the Christmas holiday season.

1.A Series of Unfortunate Events (Season 1 & 2)

Netflix

Perhaps you know the brilliant book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickett. Perhaps you don't. Perhaps it's actually better if you don't. It's so sad and about orphans, and death, and disaster. A lot of disasters actually. The wonderful series stars Neil Patrick Harris as the evil Count Olaf, constantly scheming to get his hands on the inheritance of the Baudelaire children, Violent, Klaus and little Sunny (who bites). Before the third and final season covering the last books, catch up on the first and new second seasons of this beautifully done story.

2.Vikings (2nd half of season 5)

Showmax

While you're waiting for the final season of Game of Thrones coming to M-Net (DStv 101) in 2019, use this time to catch up on this Nordish "game of thrones". Showmax is adding the episodes weekly of the just started second half of the 5th season of this series about vikings that is inspired by the legends of one of the best-known Norse heroes, Ragnar Lothbrok. 

The characters are rich and multifaceted, the plot unexpected, and if you love Thrones we can fully guarantee that you will love this viking drama spectacle.

3.Doctor Who New Year's Special 2019

Showmax

Daleks will probably come hunt the BBC for this but the Beep has broken with tradition. No, not for choosing a woman to take over from a man (here's looking at you Jodie Whittaker) from the current 11th season, but for moving the traditional Christmas Day episode to New Year's Day.

This year the season ender special additional episode that used to be on Christmas Day is moving to 1 January 2019, with Showmax that will have it on 2 January. This time it's actually set on, and taking place on New Year's Day and the producers are promising "a big, thrilling, explosive, moving, cheeky, surprising treat".

4.Origin

YouTube

There's been basically no publicity for this but that's why we're here to tell you about Origin, a brand-new YouTube Original series that was filmed in Cape Town. Set in space, you can watch the first two episodes of this 10-episode drama series for free on YouTube. A group of people wake up aboard a space ship heading for a far-flung planet to colonise, after some type of a disaster. Oh, let's end the suspense - something is onboard! A mysterious alien thing. The survivors have to figure out who the alien inhabited, and it has a weak spot: memory. Tom Felton who was Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter is all grown-up (and still rude and ugly to everyone). Is he the alien?

5.Elite

Netflix

Imagine The OC, Gossip Girl, Beverly Hills 90210 and How to Get Away with Murder all rolled into one, set at an elite (hence the title) private high school where one of the pupils have died.  This new 8-episode teen drama series is utterly compelling and there's something you don't have to worry about: It's Spanish, but you can watch it with an English soundtrack (that doesn't sound "telenovela dubbing" like at all, and there are also English subtitles.

This "whodunnit" series wonderfully playing and subverting every teen TV show trope you thought you knew in a whole new way, is absolutely brilliant and will keep you guessing right until the end. Three working class students, after their school collapsed due to faulty construction, get the chance to go to the private school Las Encinas. Now mix together the jock, the Muslim girl, the blonde girl, the "teen queen" popular girl, the working class good guy, the working class guy's best friend, the sports star and an array of others for an addictive murder mystery. Who is gay, who is pregnant, who is addicted, who is getting murdered? We won't answer those questions but you'll find out who died at the end of the first episode.

6.The Bureau of Magical Things

DStv Now Catch Up

This new Nickelodeon teen series filmed in Australia revolves around the teenager Kyra who discovers a magical world existing right alongside the real world, filled with fairies, elves, and other creatures. How to do high school while helping bookstore owner and Professor Maxwell who is a teacher of magic at the Department of Magical Intervention (DMI)?

7.Condor

Showmax

The very best spy drama of the year is this new 10-episode series that has been renewed for a second season and is a modern-day version of the 1975-film, Three Days of the Condor, based on the 1974-novel. 

Max Irons (the actor-model son of Jeremy Irons), is the young CIA analyst Joe Turner literally running for his life, trying to solve a vast conspiracy within the CIA as vicious assassins are hot on his trail in a frenetic, Terminator 2-like chase that's seemingly without end. William Hunt and Mira Sorvino bring ballast to the cast, and the tension, and unexpected twists and turns will have you gasping.

8.Jack Ryan

Amazon Prime Video

The year's second best spy drama is this excellent and gripping modern-day version of the Jack Clancy's Jack Ryan character, this time with John Krasinski in the lead role of this 8-episode season executive produced by Carlton Cruse and Michael Bay, and that has been renewed for a second season.

The "desk job" CIA analyst Jack Ryan stumbles upon a series of dubious bank transfers done by terrorists. Quickly he becomes drawn into an international spy operation, while he finds new love, deals with trauma from his past, and ends up having to try and save the live of the American president.

9.Vanity Fair

Showmax

This beautiful 7-episode British period drama miniseries is a retelling of William Makepeace Thackeray's famous 1848 novel about Becky Sharp (Olivia Cooke), a ruthless (but in a good way) social climber who uses her charms and intelligence to fascinate and seduce upper-class men to improve her position and circumstances in life.

Until that new Downton Abbey movie in 2019, the costumes, clever story, great acting, and sumptuous backdrops will give you all the feels about that wonderful bygone 19th-century British society era.

10. Marvel's Runaways (season 2)

Showmax

The 13-episode second season of this drama series that became available for streaming on Friday in America will drop on Showmax from 24 December. In the first season, 6 teenagers going to the same school, trying to solve a murder mystery, discover that their parents have secret superhuman powers and are hiding dark secrets.

The nerd, the goth, the jock, the blonde girl, the socially-shy girl and the one with the purple hair all band together in the new season as they are on the run. They find a new place to live, as they attempt to use their new superhuman abilities as a group.