Skeem saam soars
How did skeem go from a 13-episode drama series to become south Africa’s most popular soapie? We investigate.
putting pen to paper
n november 2013, skeem saam’s creator, writer and producer winnie serite got “the call” from the sabc mothership – her drama series was the talk of the town after season 2 slaughtered the competition, averaging 4.9 million viewers per episode. could skeem saam do it five days a week from july 2014? yes! with eight years on isidingo’s scriptwriting team under her belt, winnie had a good idea of what lay ahead. “i felt honoured and privileged to be afforded a rare opportunity to turn a drama into a daily. hard work and sleepless nights finally paid off,” she says proudly. but there were plenty of challenges too… the scriptwriters were the first to have to adapt. “we knew that we’d have to brainstorm stories for 260 half-hour episodes – [10 times more episodes than in season 2],” says winnie. “the first step was to put together a writing team and brainstorm fresh, compelling stories. transitioning from an hour-long weekly to a half-hour daily format wasn’t that difficult for the writers as they had all worked on other soapies before. fortunately, skeem saam already had some soap characteristics: it’s set in a familiar community, follows a group of boys and their families, tackles social issues, relationships, emotional and moral conflicts. part of the appeal of soaps is seeing characters frequently, and forming relationships with those who’re similar to you. we tell a variety of character-driven stories so that viewers don’t get tired of certain characters and their problems. so we only needed to make slight changes to strengthen the story. we expanded them and introduced new characters [like amanda du-pont’s popular lelo]. good stories are the engine that drives skeem saam. the main difference is that we now have a larger database of consultants to help with expert information.”
building it
while the writers were working full tilt, the production staff got busy too. “setting up production for a soapie is a mammoth task,” says winnie. some of the things that we had to do were… • checking actor availability for most of the year rather than a couple of months and cast new characters. • finding and booking suitable studio space. a 900m2 sound studio at sasani studios in joburg fits the bill. “when skeem saam was still a weekly drama, we only ever shot on location,” says winnie. “we now have a permanent ‘home’ that we shoot from, where some of our sets are based. in the past, all of these were on location. the only place where we still shoot
and action!
“when doing a show airing once a week, you still have time to make changes,” says winnie. “now we have to really work like a factory. we didn’t even have the luxury of meeting with the entire cast to prep them of what was to come. i guess everyone just dove in after receiving the call.” so take a moment to think what an enormous adjustment it’s been for the cast and how brilliantly they’ve coped. nobody could have predicted the chain of events that saw skeem saam take over the generations timeslot this october, but considering what they tackled to transform into a soapie, that was the easy part. sabc says that the soapie’s viewership stands at about
9.4 million.