Ja­nine Charles-Far­ray

Even though the num­ber of tele­vi­sion sta­tions has in­creased, it has been six years since a pop­u­lar lo­cal dra­ma se­ries has been aired in T&T.

This may not be for a lack of au­di­ence in­ter­est. Trend­ing sta­tis­tics from view­er­ship sur­veys such as the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed bi-an­nu­al Me­di­a­Trak re­port done by Mar­ket Facts and Opin­ions il­lus­trate that au­di­ence de­mand for lo­cal prod­ucts on lo­cal tele­vi­sion (ver­sus ca­ble) is on the rise.

It al­so may not be for a lack of lo­cal TV projects. The Film Co (TTFC) con­firmed that over 32 tele­vi­sion project ap­pli­ca­tions for its var­i­ous fund­ing pro­grammes have been re­ceived (and some par­tial­ly fund­ed) over the short eight-year his­to­ry of the agency's op­er­a­tions.

In a spe­cial­ized call for tele­vi­sion pi­lots in 2014, ten TV show ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived, four of which re­ceived par­tial fund­ing. One of these four TV show projects is The Apart­ment, sched­uled to be aired on CCN TV6 lat­er in 2015.

The TV se­ries is led by for­mer Syn­er­gy TV per­son­al­i­ty and pro­duc­er Ver­e­na Boodoos­ingh, pow­ered by PWTM Pro­duc­tions and ex­ec­u­tive pro­duced by Pauline Mark.

The Apart­ment is a half-hour, eight-episode dark com­e­dy/ dra­ma that ex­plores the lives of three room­mates (played by Boodoos­ingh, Mark, and Jamie-Lee Phillips) liv­ing to­geth­er in an up­scale apart­ment in north Trinidad.

The Apart­ment will ex­plore the lives of these three women along with the dif­fer­ent peo­ple who in­hab­it their emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal liv­ing space.

It al­so stars sev­er­al fa­mil­iar faces–such as Si­mone Har­ris and Kar­la C Gon­za­les, both of whom had roles on West­wood Park, along with the­atre vet­er­an and T&T cul­tur­al am­bas­sador Rhoma Spencer–and fast-ris­ing new­com­ers Brett Ben­gochea and Rus­sell Wilkin­son-Taitt.

The se­ries has al­ready re­ceived sup­port from cor­po­rate T&T in the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) and Massy Stores. Oth­er cor­po­rate in­vestors are en­cour­aged to con­sid­er the project.

"I re­mem­ber all those shows: Sug­ar Cane Ar­rows, No Bound­aries, Cal­abash Al­ley and, of course, West­wood Park. All these pro­duc­tions rep­re­sent the foun­da­tion of our tele­vi­sion in­dus­try and I am aim­ing for The Apart­ment to join those ranks." said Mark.

"I think lo­cal view­ers can look for­ward to an ex­plo­ration of fa­mil­iar themes like friend­ship, sis­ter­hood, iden­ti­ty, ro­mance, love and fam­i­ly life. Make no mis­take, the sub­ject mat­ter is se­ri­ous and gets very dark in ex­plor­ing the skele­tons in the clos­ets of these char­ac­ters such as al­co­holism in women, self-es­teem, self-harm, and the dread­ed is­sue of 'quar­ter life cri­sis', but the de­liv­ery will be com­plete­ly comedic and en­ter­tain­ing."

Mark con­firmed that The Apart­ment TV se­ries is set to be­gin pro­duc­tion af­ter Car­ni­val and will be ready for air­ing from Ju­ly 2015.

www.thea­part­menttvshow.com and face­book.com/TheA­part­mentTVseries

hash­tag crick­ets?

At any time, the av­er­age Tri­ni view­er can ex­cit­ed­ly Tweet, Face­book and What­sapp the lat­est news on the hun­dreds of pop­u­lar US and UK TV show pre­mieres and new sea­sons. How­ev­er, if one wants to have a sim­i­lar dis­cus­sion on what is pop­u­lar among lo­cal nar­ra­tive TV shows, it is a true in­di­ca­tion to the bar­ren waste­land of lo­cal dra­ma TV pro­gram­ming when one has to go back over 20 and in some cas­es 40 years to rem­i­nisce.

For many view­ers, the gold­en age of lo­cal dra­ma se­ries on tele­vi­sion falls with­in the 1970 to late 1980s pe­ri­od. Back then, gov­ern­ment-owned TTT reigned supreme as the na­tion's on­ly broad­cast­er and aired sev­er­al beloved clas­sic ti­tles such as Cal­abash Al­ley (1970), Who the Cap Fits (1977), Mor­ral (1979), Turn of the Tide (1984), No Bound­aries (1985-1987) and Sug­ar Cane Ar­rows (1988).

Oth­er lo­cal dra­ma TV shows pop­u­lar dur­ing that time in­clude the four-part half-hour dra­ma se­ries Epiphany (1981) pro­duced by Banyan Ltd and star­ring Mar­ti­na Laird, Tony Hall and Christo­pher Pin­heiro, the 1983 made-for-TV movie The Rig and short­er, TV pi­lot-for­mat dra­mat­ic shorts such as The Mu­sic of the Street (1995) and Walk Like a Drag­on (1997).

As T&T en­tered the 20th cen­tu­ry, the tele­vi­sion land­scape changed on In­de­pen­dence Day of 1991 (Au­gust 31st) with the launch of TV6, which be­came the first in­de­pen­dent­ly op­er­at­ed tele­vi­sion sta­tion in the Eng­lish speak­ing Caribbean.

Dur­ing this tran­si­tion of the lo­cal tele­vi­sion in­dus­try, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of lo­cal nar­ra­tive se­ries nev­er waned and lo­cal ap­petites were sa­ti­at­ed with an un­prece­dent­ed six sea­sons of leg­endary nar­ra­tive dra­ma se­ries West­wood Park.

Wild­ly pop­u­lar and still com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful to date, the West­wood Park se­ries, pro­duced by Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaller, ran a whop­ping 80+ episodes from 1997 to 2004, ini­tial­ly broad­cast on TTT and then even­tu­al­ly moved to the then-new­com­er CCN TV6.

Pri­vate­ly-owned Gayelle Caribbean (Gayelle TV, Gayelle the Chan­nel), born out of the orig­i­nal Banyan pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, al­so of­fered shows such as Philom­e­na and Snacks dur­ing the height of its pop­u­lar­i­ty be­tween 2004- 2008, which were themed, large­ly un­script­ed and ac­tor-im­pro­vised sto­ry­lines with en­gag­ing char­ac­ters.

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Af­ter the end of West­wood Park, the age of reg­u­lar lo­cal nar­ra­tive pro­gram­ming seemed to slow down. In 2008, the first and on­ly sea­son of The Reef, al­so pro­duced by Di­ef­fen­thaller, was aired on CTV, the suc­ces­sor to TTT.