Kerry-Anne Allerston
Image: Supplied
I remember when the very first episode of Egoli: Place of Gold aired. We were at my uncle Peter’s house and it was back when families played cards at each other’s houses on Friday nights and Sundays were always braai days. I think we still had TV presenters telling us what was coming up next and Scott Scott and Ashley Hayden were superstars.
It was 1992 and television was a very different beast. There weren’t nineteen streaming platforms and six remotes to lose down the side of the couch. When something big was on, everyone watched it. Egoli arrived on M Net on 6 April 1992 and South Africans fell in love with the people, the drama and, of course, the glamour of the Place of Gold.
Families really did plan their evenings around their favourite shows and missing an episode was an actual problem. There was no going back three episodes because you’d been out for dinner. If you missed it, you missed it.
A year or two later my mom and I drove past Sasani Studios and I spotted one of the Egoli actors walking out. This was quite a thing. I had seen an actual television person in the wild. Fast forward about ten years and, as luck would have it, I became besties with one of the writers on the show.
The next thing I knew I was an extra on Egoli a bunch of times and basically hanging around having lunch at the studios with the actors two or three times a week. My friend went on to become one of the head writers and I even started booking musicians for episodes that needed live entertainment at the Edwards mansion or for a launch, party or special event.
Life is very funny like that. One minute you’re staring out of the car window hoping to catch a glimpse of someone from the telly and a decade later you’re asking what everyone wants for lunch.
It was really cool getting to know the scripts and characters I’d watched from such a young age and seeing the ins and outs of how everything worked behind the scenes. Sasani was the home of Egoli throughout its incredible 18 year run and the show eventually clocked up thousands of episodes before saying goodbye in 2010.
I loved seeing how much work went into creating that little world we watched on our screens every evening. The sets, the writers, the crew, the actors, the rehearsals and all the people you never saw when the credits rolled were part of this enormous television machine. I think being around it made me love TV even more because suddenly I knew what was happening on the other side of the screen.
At the same time, we were getting some pretty cool series from America and the UK too. Obviously there were shows that seemed to have been around since the beginning of time like Days of Our Lives and The Bold and the Beautiful, and we had brilliant British comedy like Fawlty Towers and the long running Coronation Street amongst many others.
Then came that era of enormous series that everyone seemed to be talking about. Desperate Housewives, Lost, Prison Break and Grey’s Anatomy landed in the 2000s and suddenly we were properly invested. Who was going to survive? What on earth was happening on that island? And how many disasters could possibly happen to one group of doctors? Apparently quite a lot. This was still the age of M Net, scheduled television and trips to the local video shop for a box set of DVDs if you really wanted to binge.
Now look at us. We’re several streaming platforms deep and there’s always something else someone insists you absolutely have to watch. My ex boyfriend used to say he had finished YouTube and I completely understand what he meant. With my insomnia I sometimes feel like I’ve finished television. I whizz through series like a machine and there really is some incredible TV out there.
The funny thing is that we’ve gone from waiting an entire week for the next episode of something to feeling personally offended when a streaming service makes us wait seven days. Excuse me, I need to know what happens immediately. We have become impatient little television monsters and I am absolutely including myself here.
What makes me especially happy is how much brilliant South African television we have had and continue to have. When you talk about Egoli, you can’t help thinking about shows like Isidingo, Generations, 7de Laan, Scandal! and Binnelanders too. They became part of people’s routines and, in many cases, part of our cultural history.
More recently I really enjoyed Still Breathing and Catch Me A Killer, and there are so many local productions, actors, writers, directors and crews doing extraordinary work that I could keep you here all day talking about them. We have come a very long way from having a handful of channels to choose from and waiting for someone on the television to tell us what was coming up next.
It also happens to be awards season, which makes all of this feel even more special. The 32nd South African Music Awards took place at Sun City on 15 August, with some of our biggest artists being celebrated, while the Silwerskerm Awards for Film and Television followed in Cape Town on 22 August, celebrating another crop of homegrown talent. We’re celebrating our musicians, actors, presenters, filmmakers and creatives and I love seeing South Africans being applauded for what they do.
From sitting at my uncle Peter’s house watching Egoli in 1992 to having more local and international television at our fingertips than we could possibly finish in one lifetime, it’s been quite a ride. I still love the big shows and the shiny new series, but there’s something very special about remembering a time when the whole family sat down together because Egoli was starting and you absolutely did not want to miss it.
