By Margaretta
wa Gacheru (posted 4 August 2019)
LIFE FM is
the radio station that we may soon be watching. It’s still in its final phase
of development, but its future looks bright.
Nonetheless,
TV viewers can be a fickle crowd and now that more and more Kenyans are making films
and sit-coms, there’s increased competition for viewers’ eyeballs.
But given
the pilot already has a star-studded cast, a super cinematographer, diligent director
and script writers seeped in imaginative ideas peppered with spicy insights
into people’s private lives, the future looks promising.
It’s not
quite so bright for Lorna, played by Mkamzee Mtalewa, the dead-of-night DJ who’s
got her call-in advice program on LIFE FM. She’s a trained psychologist who has
wise ideas for all her callers, however pained or problematic their situations
are. But she’s not so great with her own relationships. That includes her
number one man, played by Brian Ogola.
That will be
a fascinating couple to watch, since we just saw them in two very different
roles in ‘Lusala’, a film that showed off both their acting chops and made us
tell all our friends they had to see it since it is bound to be winning awards
in the near future.
But in the
first episode of LIFE FM, the phone caller played by Brenda Wairimu (who is also
a film star for her leading role in ‘Subira’) calls herself Wonder Woman in
order to cloak her true identity. Her issue is domestic abuse by her spouse,
played by Martin Githinji who just came off the Kenya National Theatre stage
where he played yet another bad guy in ‘Sarafina’.
Both Martin
and Mkamzee had leading roles in Sarafina which, according to the musical’s
director Stuart Nash, will be coming back to KNT in October at the insistence of
the Minister of Culture and the Arts, Dr Amina Mohamed.
Stuart Nash with script writer Philip Kipele
Stuart also
has a significant hand in LIFE FM since he’s both producing and directing it.
He’s also the one who got Kenyan cinematographer Nathan Prior to come on board
and film the first episode of the series. That was no small feat as Nathan is a
man in demand. He just completed filming ‘The Great Kenyan Bake Off’ which is a
take-off on the original British show that’s been picked up and cloned in
countries all over the world.
Stuart also called
in Philip Kipele and Davina Leonard to script write the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment