So the Lifetime channel launched on DStv Premium on Tuesday night (22 July) to the accompaniment of a fancy-pants launch in Jozi. The channel hosted a party for the channel as it went live and introduced the line-up to members of the press and other interested parties.
Things went live on channel 131 at 19h00 with the reality show Dance Moms ... you may have seen it the TVSA highlights yesterday? It's on weekdays at 19h10.
It follows events at the Abby Lee Dance Company owned by dance teacher and pressure-bomb Abby Lee. The studio's situated in Pittsburgh and follows Abby's young dance students - and their pushy mothers who are a big part of the picture of course. The show focuses on the dancers as they prepare for competitions and so on, while their moms watch on and get waaay too involved because of their unrequited desires to be dancers obviously.
If there's a suitably pushy dance teacher in South Africa with a similar set-up and lots of mental moms then there's a very strong possibility we'll be getting a local version here too.
I caught up with Lifetime's Vice President of Programming for the UK Heather Jones, who selects shows for our region too. She revealed that the channel wants to do a reality show as it's first local show. According to Heather, it won't be a movie or a drama series because of how much international drama there is available and also, because of the cost, so their focus is on reality and documentary. The show itself hasn't been confirmed yet.
This from Heather:
We'll look at doing something we did in the UK which is localising the US franchises so the first commission I've done in the UK is ... we've actually just finished shooting a local version of Dance Moms - called Dance Mums because that's what we call them in the UK. There are all sorts of formats in the Lifetime stable of content that might well apply to localisation so we have a number of opportunities but they'll all be in the reality space.
She went on to say that they'll be launching local content in the first part of next year and will be spending 20% of their budget on it in their first year.
Preachers' daughters.
Besides Dance Moms, other show options include Preachers' Daughters or they might even do a Real Housewives of Sandton/Cape Town/Durbs/South Africa. As we know, there have been rumblings about one in the past but it's never happened.
Lifetime didn't say this in so many words but it would make sense if they did because they're involved with the Housewives franchise.
Which show should they should do first? ... My vote goes to Preacher's Daughters. I dated a Preacher's Son so I know how complicated things can get with Preacher’s Children. He was cool but things got complicated the longer we dated ... particularly after his parents met me, ha!
Here's a trailer for the American version (on Wednesdays at 20h00) followed by a trailer for Dance Moms: