It was a month ago that Muvhango fans tuned in to the soapie's 3000th episode to discover that the world of Muvhango as we knew it had been rocked by a time warp that caused mayhem.
Thandaza's world was crushed without a funeral, new characters barged in, others disappeared, James married a stranger and a whopping 18 months had passed between the night before and Now.
What have the writers done?! - and
why?
TVSA went in search of answers and spoke to Muvhango script editor and scriptwriter Nontuthuzelo Magoxo, who represents the soapie's team of writers.
This is what she has to say:
TVSA: You obviously know that lots of people have been very vocal about the "new" Muvhango and that many viewers have been angry and confused by the time and storyline changes.
Why did you make the decision to leap forward in time? Was it because Duma Ndlovu asked you to? Was it because Sindi Dlathu left? Was it to make a name for yourself as a writer?
Was it because you felt the show was getting stale after 3000 episodes? Please fill us in on your thought process and the reason for the change?
Ntuthu: The story and production as a whole was at a place where we definitely needed a change and we saw the opportunity to make that drastic change, to take a fresh breath of air, if that makes sense.
We needed to breathe new life into the show because when a show's been on for 20 years, all the characters have done everything that the character can do so we sort of needed a quantum leap to shake things up and change things around.
It being episode 3000, it was like: "How are we going to make this count?" because past Episode 3000, Muvhango can't feel like the same old Muvhango that it's been for the past 20 years so we were in desperate need of exciting change.
Moving the story along by 18 months felt like it would present that change and freshness we were so desperately craving.
TVSA: Did Sindi Dlathu leaving also contribute to it? Like the end of an era and needing something new?
Ntuthu: The change was inevitable, whether or not she was there. Obviously when a production loses their leading lady who's been their leading lady for 20 years, it sort of puts you in a position where you have to re-strategize and move pieces around.
We still would have made some big changes
with her, but with her leaving it sort of propelled us to make that change so I do think her leaving was a big contributing factor but it wasn't the only one.
The Muvhango writing team includes three storyliners, eight script writers - some double-up as script editors - and Head Writer Chisanga Kabinga.
TVSA: Were you the writer who suggested the new way forward? How did the whole thing work? Was it Duma who said, "Listen everyone, come to me with ideas." How did that process work?
Ntuthu: I wasn't the writer that came up with the way forward, I was just the one presenting it. I just presented an idea that we'd discussed as a team. How it worked is... jeez... how do ideas come up?
We'd agonized over the need for a change, so as a team collectively we were just throwing out crazy ideas, "What's the craziest thing that could happen on Muvhango, on Episode 3000?"
As we were throwing out ideas, this one caught. Another thing was that with the leaving of Thandaza, because Thandaza's family was a family that we switched on for in our Joburg world, we needed a family to switch on for.
The Thandaza household is not a household we would otherwise switch on for if she wasn't there so we needed a patriarch in Joburg.
We needed that family structure in Joburg because we are a family show and, as with any soap, all the good stories come from family stories so we needed that family.
We'd been looking for months as a team, we'd been looking at our James character and how he had developed over the years.
We just felt like it was time to put him in a position where, in the Joburg world, he was driving the family that we would be switching on for - he was the patriarch of the family that you'd be switching on for.
When you've had a character for 20 years, we weren't interested in starting him with a love story, courting a girl, starting a new family, having a baby - that's something we weren't interested in - we almost wanted an instant family - we wanted to play those family dynamics immediately.
The idea of marrying him to a woman who already came with a varsity going-aged child and a mid-20-year-ild child as well... so the idea of bringing in a blended family that James would be the patriarch and leader of, was born of that need to have a family that we want to switch on for.
TVSA: And what about Imani and Ranthu?
Ntuthu: That idea came from... it was like an ode to the side chick right. When you are the side chick, you always think, "If I get the husband, if I get the husband then everything will be perfect," but what happens when you do actually get the husband? - so it was that.
Imani finally gets her man. When Imani first came to the show she fell in love with Ranthumeng immediately and he fell in love with her immediately so we were paying off that love that they were never able to be together.
We were paying off that need of their being together but things just go pear shaped because she marries somebody who's just lost his wife and we haven't outright said that Thandaza died -
TVSA: Yes, that's what people have been saying, "But there's no funeral!"
Ntuthu: Yes, that's the interesting thing - people were more mad about the fact that there was no funeral. They were okay with her dying,
if she died - we didn't explicitly say she died, so they were like, "Okay, so she's dead, okay, cool, but we need a funeral."
That was very interesting for me - the loss of the character was not as big as the loss of closure, the loss of the opportunity to have closure with the character - that was very interesting to me.
TVSA: Definitely, a funeral gives closure to people and now people have been left feeling she might come back?
Ntuthu: Um, yes, and because we may run for the next 20, 30, 40 years, there are doors that you don't want to shut indefinitely so we have left it open ended.
However, Ranthumeng as a character
has lost his wife one way or another so in his grieving time, Imani was almost the natural person to be there for him because they share a child but when you walk into a situation where a man has lost something so important to him, his wife, it's not going to be roses and candlelight
She's a young wife, she's significantly younger than Thandaza, so she's a young wife who came into this marriage with certain ideals and she's coming into an un-ideal situation that nothing could have prepared her for.
Ranthumeng is closed off - it's almost like he expected Imani to take over the wife role without courting her.
It's like she's just settled into somebody else's shoes and he still continues not to put in the work to sustain their relationship like you would a new relationship, if that makes sense.
New character Brother Max, played by Mike Ndlangamandla
TVSA: Are there any other new characters on the horizon?
Ntuthu: No, the characters that we have - the thing is, because we're such a huge cast ensemble, we're very cautious about the characters that we bring in.
Production is actually always telling us, "Scale down, scale down, you guys are bringing in too many characters," when they talk to us, the script department so we don't foresee any new characters.
Of course every story does come with its set of satellite characters - those are characters that come into the story.
They're not necessarily of our world - so they may come in, make whatever impact that they will make, and leave - that's just the culture of ongoing storytelling on a soap.
In terms of consistency, the characters that we've established are the characters we will continue with to the end of the season.
TVSA: What about favourite characters who've disappeared?
Ntuthu: Our past character Meme is coming back - we've sort of given it away in our credits.
TVSA: What's happening with KK?
Ntuthu: He's also coming back with a strong story. In terms of character, he hasn't changed, he's still the KK that we know however we do have a story that's coming that changes him. It doesn't change the character but it changes his world.
TVSA: Is there anyone who was in the old Muvhango who's
not going to be in the new one?
Ntuthu: Well, we don't have Vusi, we don't have MaNgosi so we don't have the Thandaza household.
TVSA: Will Vusi never come back?
Ntuthu: There's no way of saying that. Soap is a revolving door. To say that such-and-such a character will never come back - that's almost like writing yourself into a corner.
There are always opportunities to bring old characters back. At this point I definitely can't say that those characters will never come back.
If there are opportune moments to bring them back, we'll go for them but we are led by story so if the story calls for a certain character then we will engage that character but if it doesn't, it doesn't.
TVSA: Is Muvhango going to suffer from the "Lost phenomenon"? The writers of Lost kept introducing new ideas and storylines for six seasons but didn't follow them through and ended up very Lost as a result.
There were gaping holes in the storyline which also played with time and new characters and many questions were left unanswered by the end. Is the same going to happen with Muvhango?
Ntuthu: No, I don't think so at all because the only major changes that we've made were all sort of set up in that first week - we've called it the Muvhango relaunch, post-3000 - and we spend the rest of the season paying off those changes.
There isn't a time when you wake up to something that wasn't set up at the beginning of the new season - even though it's not the new season because episode 3000 came sort of a quarter way into it - but we view it as a new season.
We view it as a relaunch so we are paying off everything that we have set up in that first week, in that first change.
TVSA: And there will be clarity for people going forward?
Ntuthu: Absolutely, I mean there is already - if the viewer has been watching since episode 3000, things are already falling into place, things are already making sense.
It's like if you watch a completely new show, it doesn't take you more than a few episodes to know who's who. We're not going to wake up to Masindi as CEO of MMC next week, we're not going to wake up with James as the Chief of Thathe.
TVSA: People will be happy about that... thanks Ntuthu, this has been informative.
Ntuthu: I'm glad that from the writer's team we've had the opportunity of shedding light on our process. We know that viewers were put in a very tricky position where they were expected to adjust overnight so the opportunity to shed some light on the changes and the risk that we've taken is very welcomed.