Disappointment on calling long distance this past week made the matter imperative. The party at the other end said to call back because she was watching ‘Diego’. Imagine the credit units wasted! And this after hearing colleagues whine bitterly about how work is going to make them miss an episode!

A plan took shape. Rest third term for a week. Wait and see if you get counted this census week. Put every other thing on hold. Consider the matter a patriotic duty: Latin America is invading; somebody has to defend the motherland. So forget that good advice that you shouldn’t critique what you’ve not read (in this case ‘seen’) and by all means pour some water and hope to melt some of that soap! And if a horde comes fighting back, stand firm!

Indeed, it’s all figured out: a regular hatchet job to nail that soap-opera, When You Are Mine, which seems to have a rather high number of people gluing their gazes on TV screens across the country. But then, the light-bulb of yore flashes: who’d want to read it anyway, when those who are interested simply want to keep watching the show till the end of time? Certainly not folks like this writer who have little or no interest in the programme.

What with characters bearing names like Palama or palaver or whatever, you’d be quite in order not to want to be bothered by an essay, no matter how dissident, on a peculiarly named soap that implies a whole lot more than its probable pot-boiler plot would likely deliver. Moreover, have to pause and ponder what exactly can be inside this TV series that has such terrible lip-sync (seen clips of it in a restaurant during chow hour) which has got usually circumspect folk like the editor of the Weekly Trust newspaper cornered.

Why disparate people from every conceivable background will be so drawn to When You Are Mine is something some serious behavioural scientists ought to investigate with patience. To hear devotees carry on about how what Diego said or did to the Palama woman wasn’t fair, you’d think they know these characters in person.

And don’t kid yourself that it’s only ladies falling over these make-believe people in a make-believe world. There’s a guy here who’s up to scratch on what no-good deed the ubiquitous Diego has been up to. And just when the conclusion has been reached in this quarter that there possibly can’t be a more atrocious character than the infamous Diego, the editor comes up with a baddie under the moniker Fabian who, by her word, would make a regular boy scout with all the honour baggage out of Diego.

And then it would seem there’s a Bernice whom a colleague takes time to explain is the personification of greed. In his view, the show is interesting because it’s got suspense. While he, like this writer, is worried about the long-term cultural effects of the series on the Nigerian populace, another colleague is appalled because during a recent blackout, his mother took a jerry can and walked three houses to get fuel for the generator so she could watch When You Are Mine!

Meanwhile, Fabian’s name has hardly been mentioned when another lady in the office takes up the matter. She holds fort on how Fabian’s bad guy role is so necessary; how he’s only playing a part (isn’t that what they’re all doing?) and then laments how, between interruptions by her mother and the power monopoly PHCN, she’s almost as good as missed two episodes. But apparently none of that really matters because a friend has already told her how the series will end.

According to her, Barbara, yes, there is a character with that name, gets everything, this being a series revolving around some inheritance. (Is there no resistance to pecuniary matters? you should wonder!) The question of what point there is in watching the series since she already knows how it ends doesn’t quite make it into circulation when the first guy comes back into the conversation with the beef that he’s not going to watch the series anymore because there’s some fraudulent attempt, in his opinion, to milk cash out of viewers by way of text messages that would be billed at fifty naira a pop. Okay. Alright. All this aggravation over a soap-opera?

Having neither a TV nor the interest to invest time in watching what sounds very much like just another Latin American weepy, one turns to the web and discovers the Latin American peril is world-wide (see the blog Beautiful Atrocities http://beautifulatrocities.com/archives/2005/01/beautiful_atroc.html).

How a society that once waited with bated breath for new instalments of the iconic Nigerian-made Cock Crow at Dawn can now be so overwhelmed by another vehicle of foreign culture and values (worse than Coca-cola and the ‘wanna-gonna’ syndrome), your correspondent cannot say. But, before the horde of When You Are Mine addicts starts beating a path to his door, far be it from him to beef. After all, in the Internet and short stories with deviant characters, he has his own addictions. Meanwhile, have you been counted?

Robot  # 1 | 23.03.2006 22:45

Disappointment on calling long distance this past week made the matter imperative. The party at the other end said to call back because she was watching ‘Diego’. Imagine the credit units wasted! And this after hearing colleagues whine bitterly about how work is going to make them miss an episode!A plan took shape. Rest third term for a week. Wait and see if you get counted this census week. Put every other thing on hold. Consider the matter a patriotic duty: Latin America is invading; somebody has to defend the motherland. So forget that good advice that yo...Read the full article.

Tomr  # 2 | 24.03.2006 10:23

One word answer - escapism. Some people don't need that kind of entertainment, some preferring to bury themselves in the latest blockbuster from the West, and others preferring drink. Few nowadays opt for a long walk (armed robbers put paid to that long ago) or a truly worthwhile novel (not too many on the market). So, 'When you are Mine' or whatever soap comes along provides the entertainment. Don't blame you though... it is truly disconcerting to be put on hold because of a soap opera! :-)