Estate Blues, a worthy Zimbabwe soap

ESTATE BLUES, one of our few Zimbabwean TV soaps, which snatched two prime time slots after the fall of the first, dubbed Studio 263, has, no doubt, got the hang of it now and it’s something worth glueing you on.

Check the anchor, chief Arinze and “wife”, they have just upped their bodily expressions!

Watch how the newer breed of cast are real actors!

The quick switch of scenes and coherence!

How the cast goes about in some of Harare’s trendier venues!

Estate Blues must be busy shoving the blues behind them and can only get better. They aren’t there yet because we deserve the best.

See, a soap should interest intuitively or rather it should switch viewers on. If people have to switch on to it then it’s not worth the effort for it has lost the detergent. It's gone scummy and not slippery!

Scum is what drove Studio 263’s river dry (and Small House Saga have floated down stream somewhere too). Switching on to 263 would provoke bouts of nausea and irritation, telltale signs and symptoms of revulsion.

The cause was very exaggerated actresses/actors endowed with snotty accents, minute traces of talent, little or no rehearsals and the dish salt'n'peppered with poor production.

Follow this drift for your gourd of bad production skills churned at us ad nauseam. A family is leaving their homestead for a visit in a car. You get to see all suitcases packed, loaded one by one into the boot, the ceremonial goodbyes, the car is cranked (and all the false starts), reverse gear engaged, out of the gate, forward gear and agonisingly it squeaks off. There is no way of titrating and still keep the idea?

The story lines (or lack of ) hover over people intelligibly quarreling in business offices for months on end with little if any relevance to the actual; a Zimbabwe largely under social stress.

We hope Studio 263 bounces back with a new face. If not, they are better off where they belong and that is off screen.

The mind also puzzles why one almost always bumps into many of our small screen celebrities patrolling the streets like police details scouting for bribes.

When do they rehearse, spice up and action! Theirs has to be a whole working day vocation too.