Why international TV drama is better

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in South Africa knows that this country has great stories to tell. And I'm not talking about rehashed apartheid guilt stuff. Just open a newspaper on any given day, listen to a conversation in a taxi, or to the callers on 702, and unlike New Zealand or Canada, where a flat tyre on a country road makes headline news, you will realise that we seem able to generate endless tales of human drama and intrigue.

South Africans are just interesting people!

So why, when you sit down to watch the latest local drama on any of the local TV channels, do you find yourself flicking to Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy or CSI (any one of them)?

Now I know that you are thinking, he's going to say "Budget!" No, that's lower on the list, the real answer is simply this - interesting stuff happens constantly. Profound, isn't it?

Took me years to work it out

It took me years to work it out but it's as simple as that. There are no dull moments, awkward pauses or great ‘wadges' of unnecessary dialogue. Every frame is moving the story or the character development along.

Simply put, a lot of what we pass as one-hour TV drama is actually half-hour TV drama stretched out with long shots of cars arriving, people walking, and hopelessly flabby dialogue scenes.

Okay, budget does come into it, because you need great writers to make great drama, but great writers ARE writing some of our drama! But then the producer comes along and (understandably) says, "No, you can't have the earth exploding and bodies flying through space!" It's the reality of ever-dwindling TV budgets!

But that's no excuse for some of the obvious padding we have to put up with. It's often just lazy writing, self-indulgent direction and sloppy editing by button pushers who aren't real storytellers.

It's really not that our stories aren't as interesting as those on the American dramas; it's just that in many cases we aren't telling them right.