Celebrity magazine tops the bill

LEADING off the weekend, as it usually does every Friday at 7.30pm on SABC2, is the celebrity and entertainment magazine Top Billing.

In this week’s edition regular hostess Basetsane Makgalamele meets popular radio deejay and M-Net TV sports personality Darren Scott.

Then the programme visits the second-oldest fox- hunting club in the world which is based in the Western Cape.

But before any animal rights supporters among our readership get excited, let it be added that instead of chasing real foxes, these red-clad riders pursue a scented sack!

Top Billing also goes behind the scenes on the FHM Collections Fashion Shoot in Mozambique.

SABC1 introduces a brand-new choral music series at 5.30pm on Sunday evening.

Fresh and exciting, the show carries the title Imizwilili/Magnificent Sounds and directly replaces Joy of Jazz.

It is in fact, though, the replacement, for the next six months (23 programmes), of the long-running Unqambothi/ Sweet Melodies, the final episode of which was shot on September 9.

The main aim of the new series is to take choral music to a new level by not only entertaining and informing viewers. It will aim to truly celebrate and inspire the youth of this country.

The show will attempt to present choral groups from all over South Africa in a refreshingly exciting manner by locating them in the individual cultural environments associated with their daily lives.

The segments in the programmes will include studio recordings, production and transmission of music videos of the most outstanding groups, recording choirs in their own areas and focusing on their historical backgrounds and capturing the rich lives of composers and musicians through documentary inserts and interviews.

Choral events and competitions will be brought to life in the series, which will also seek to provide a platform for the further education of choir leaders and members while also focusing on children and youth groups and the discovery of new choirs.

Produced for SABC1 by Ukhamba Communications, Imizwilili will be presented by Nonkululeko Kgotsitsile.

WHILE the choirs are doing their thing on SABC1, over on SABC3 the Sunday comedy hour, which is led off by the excellent As Time Goes By, features the zany laugh-raising antics of My Hero.

This 2001 BBC sitcom brilliantly spoofs the superhero adventure genre.

On the surface George Sunday (Ardal O’Hanlon), appears to be a mild-mannered Irishman who runs a health shop.

In reality, he is Thermoman, a leotard-wearing, log-chested superhero who hails from the planet Ultron.

In the very first episode he rescued nurse Janet Dawkins (Emily Joyce) and was so taken by her that he moved to England to be nearer to her and the couple fell in love.

The rather broad but very funny comedy in the series is mainly based on George’s attempts to come to grips with everyday life while combining a dual career as a superhero and a slightly odd earthling.

Make no bones about it, the premise of the series is really very silly but the excellent cast carry it off.

O’Hanlon (better known as the dim-witted Fr Dougal Maguire in Father Ted) is almost lovable as George and Emily Joyce is suitably cute as his girlfriend.

The cast is rounded out by some other nutty characters, especially Geraldine McNulty as Mrs Raven, the sharp-tongued doctor’s receptionist who abuses all comers to the surgery, and Hugh Dennis as Dr Piers Crispin, the clinic’s doctor, who is far more concerned about his career as a TV medic than actually practising medicine.

If you haven’t caught it yet at 5.30