Since this week I'm in full-on mourning mode for the soap opera genre, not to mention being somewhat enamored at the moment with all things South Africa--fancy another boerewors on the braai, love?--let's have a little more something-something from the South African soapie, Egoli: Place of Gold.
We saw a segment from the show in my previous post on South African actress Esta TerBlanche, who appeared in the serial in the early and mid-1990s. One of her co-stars at the time was none other than Joan Collins, O.B.E.
I don't know too much about Egoli, other than watching a few clips, such as this one, via YouTube. From what I can discern from Wikipedia and other fonts of wisdom, the show was the first South African-created daily serial, airing in the early evening on the TV channel M-Net, which it did for nearly 20 years. Until its cancellation in 2010, Egoli was the longest-running homegrown show on South African TV.
Other than just the facts, Jack, what I can tell from various clips is that it looks like a heckuva lotta fun: One part Dynasty, one part Young and the Restless, one part chronicle of race relations and media images in the post-Apartheid era.
A case in point: The character Nenna, seen early on in the clip, is sorta/kinda Catherine Sinclair's sister-in-law. The storyline goes that Catherine's brother was involved for years with Nenna, his mixed-race housekeeper, with whom he had two children, one of whom is the very handsome Andrew seen near the end of the mash-up. Interesting that while both Catherine and Nenna are obviously fond of one another and both know the backstory, they can't really broach it, at least in the scenes shown. It's like The Help with funny (OK, point taken: just as funny) accents. Things that make you go hmmmm. But let's add that, in terms of race relations and media portrayals, the gods help us if anyone from outside the U.S. were to look at our shows with the same eye. Yikes.
That's my take on it: I'll know more soon when my DVD set, Egoli 18 (eighteen episodes of the 18-year-old show) arrives from a memorabilia seller in Johannesburg in a few weeks' time.
Whenever I watch this mash-up of clips from Joan Collins's appearance on the show, circa 1994, I'm reminded of a line from Absolutely Fabulous. In the episode, entitled "Fashion," Eddie, busy trying to get "celebritied up" for an ill-planned fashion show, shouts to her assistant Bubble, "Get on to Moët et Chandon, and tell them it's for charity! Get on to Joan Collins, and tell her it's free champagne!"
After a while you kind of get the impression our dear Joan would show up to the opening of an elevator door as long as there might be some free swag in the offing.
The role of Catherine Sinclair certainly wasn't a stretch acting-wise for dear Joan: The RADA phrasings, the same lead-with-the-shoulders approach to walking off stage, and, of course, a full complement of Eva Gabor wigs. No muss, no fuss. Pure professional Joan.
But sniping aside, she looks like she's at the top of her game. Turns out that Joan's father, Joseph Collins, was born in South Africa, so it must have been something of a homecoming for her, getting to appear--excuse me--star in a show in her father's native country.
So, brava, Joan. I certainly hope you're featured adoringly in Egoli 18. We wouldn't have it any other way.
By the way, I don't know how much she got paid to do the show, although I hear the children of South Africa went without Christmas that year. Ha.
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