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At BookArtville.com, we dutifully watch the weekday line up of TV series, between the hours of 7pm, when Flatmates comes on air and 9.30pm, when The Split ends.
It’s a marathon.
This is perhaps the strongest line up of drama content on the Africa Magic Channel 51 in that time-zone in the last six years.
Everyone has something to say in FLATMATES
What do the occupants of the house in Flatmates do? The characters talk at each other. No one makes any sense, but you can’t stop laughing. While The Johnsons, a comparable sit-com, and one time occupant of the slot, struggled to make sense, with themes that were laboured, Flatmates just flows. We will come back to this.
Tinsel (time slot: 7.30pm to 8pm) came back in August 2026 after a three month pause. The longest running soap on Nigerian Television (August 2008 till date) grows on you. It has grown on us. Its main surprise element is consistency and lack of surprises and a keen focus on the idea it was birthed around. Almost every scene, every short take, in the 25-minute show, revolves around the moving image industry. Tinsel has a lesson for soaps that start with a concept and stray. The story lines are not outstanding. But everything is always together.
Love, sickness, heartbreak, everything is about Filmmaking, in TINSEL
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Wura (time slot: 8pm-8.30pm) has strayed. It has been unable to resist feature creep and is no longer loyal to its original, singular thesis; the Gold Mine and the evil woman running it. There are some applaudable set pieces from time to time, and the notion of building a show around a corrupt and incompetent local government councilor is tempting -seeing that this is what is in your face everywhere in Nigeria. But Wura is just running here and there.
IN WURA, it’s no longer about the mine..’Leave my love life out of it.. ‘
Secret Lives, a new soap (time slot: 8.30pm-9pm), is so far true to the concept of “everyone has a dark secret”. Sustainability is always a challenge for a drama series in which everyone is plotting against someone. Can it end up as annoying as, say Venge or the latter episodes of Covenant, where every time you switch on you’re almost certainly confronted with the image of some loser shivering before a “Victor” in a dingy cell?
Villains are all over the place in SECRET LIVES…
THE SPLIT (9pm to 9.30pm) has been around since January 2026 and we’re not avid followers, but what we watched in the last three days have been hair raising.
In THE SPLIT, the man is out to get his money
This is a new column.
Welcome.
Bothumelo Gigaba
Head of The Moving Image Desk, Bookartville.com
