Our top 10 weekly selection of DSTV Now | Showmax | YouTube | Netflix | Amazon Prime
Back in the days of low flying Pterodactyls, at the tender age of ten, I participated at the South African junior tennis championships in Johannesburg. It was a grueling, exhausting week of intense tennis, but at the same time one of the most memorable and rewarding sporting events of my life. I felt like a champ, because the organisers and especially the sponsors made sure that each kid felt like a professional athlete – we received brand new cotton socks, shirts, a packet of strings, water bottles, sweat bands, as well as those all too familiar orange sachets of isotonic powder sports sachets. Is Game even still around? I ended up ranking number 173 in South Africa and I have nothing to show for it, because “What fokken participation award? We gave you free shit! Get the fuck outta here! Damn kids…”
Participating at such an event was the reward itself, plus did I really want to find out that there were only 200 kids in total? I seriously don’t know the answer but to me it felt like there were thousands of kids and I’m sticking to that belief. Because it puts me in the top of the 5 tiers, medal or no medal. Thanks, denial! I owe you a beer!
More or less three years ago a section of our group of friends (the cool section, hey?) decided that we were going to give old people’s marbles a go in order to stay out of trouble over that December, ie not getting fucked up drunk every day. We thought we were shit hot because not even a month after that, myself, my wife and another friend found ourselves competing in a friendly bowls triplets competition at the Bowls SA headquarters in Pretoria. We thought we were ready. How hard can the sport of lawn bowls possibly be? You don’t need the full match report because we got our asses handed to us by people who were on average 150 years older than us. They also generally seemed around 15 years fitter than us. Out of 40 teams who participated, we came 38th. Or as scientists would call it – third fokken worst ever.
La-Hoooooo-Za-Her!!
Now, we paid a lot of money to enter this old people competition (R300 each) and it included a lunch and prizes. The lunch was delicious and I was quite happy with the six defective tumbler glasses I “won” (because in effect I paid for it) but my spirits got dampened very quickly when every single person (all 120 of us) received a fokken participation medal to hang around our necks. Jissis.
Medals and trophies used to be awarded to winners only but have recently been reduced to little more than party tricks – a symbolic pat on the back which you can put on the mantelpiece above the fireplace or get to hang around your neck to remind you of an experience rather than a token of true achievement. Take a selfie and put it on Facebook, for fuck’s sake! It has the same effect. Not everybody gets to drive a fancy car, because if would diminish in value. The same goes for rewards and awards – when they are handed out like free t-shirts at a political rally, the truly exceptional participants and players are slighted and fucked with.
Imagine Hollywood applied this madness to the Oscars and the Emmy Awards?
“Hey there, pretty person from Lydenburg, South Africa. Here is an Emmy for you!”
OK, sorry, that was a terribly kak example, because Elizabeth Steinberg (originally from Lydenburg) did in fact win an Emmy – for graphic design and art direction at the end of 2015 for her work in a documentary for National Geographic entitled Future Cat – an animation film telling a story of how big cats adapt to the changing planet. I’ve just been waiting for over four years for the right moment to #humblebrag about my cool friend’s truly deserving and exceptional achievement.
#proudlySA
Winning should just be a marker of greatness in a particular moment, because the opportunity is there for the next person or group to work for and to seize that moment. Yes, sometimes the same group or person wins it over and over again. Think of Michael Schumacher. Or Game of Thrones. Or Michael Schumager starring in Game Of Thrones as the oke who rides the dragons fucked up fast.
Winning is a transient state, a short-lived burst of energy of sorts. The same goes for being nominated or making the short list for a prize, medal, reward or awards. And by association, if you hang out in the winner’s camp and support them or are in some way instrumental in reaching their goals, it makes you a winner in their books as well. Like the South African streaming services who buy into all the befokte cool stuff we get to watch locally. Here are some of the shows who walked away with the 2019 Emmy nominees and wins:
Multiple awards and nominations:
Game of Thrones (Showmax) walked away with 14 nominations and 2 wins
Barry (Showmax) was nominated 9 times.
Escape at Dannemora (Showmax) got 7 nods of the head.
Chernobyl (Showmax) got nominated 6 times and took home 3 golden ladies.
Better Call Saul (DStv) and Veep (Showmax) each raked in 5 nominations
A Very English Scandal (Showmax) was nominated 4 times.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (DStv), The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (DStv), Sharp Objects (Showmax) and Succession (Showmax) each had 3 nominations while Hand Maid’s Tale (Showmax) received 2 nominations.
These shows got a hat tip each:
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (DStv)
The Late Late Show with James Corden (DStv)
The Amazing Race (DStv)
dstv- The Voice (DStv with a reminder the SA version on Showmax)
True Detective (Showmax)
Head over to
the Plumlist for our top 10 pick of the week. See what you can stream in South Africa and go pick your winners.
| #10 Six series you’ve never seen on Netflix and other services Think you’ve seen absolutely everything on internet TV? Take your pick from these newly released top titles for your weekend binge-watch. |
On Netflix (read more) |
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| #9 Ramy: 2019’s watershed show (and Yaaseen Barnes approved!) There’s Friday prayers and there’s Friday night, and I’m at both!” Ramy says, exasperated. A dazed and confused twenty-something, he’s having a hard time finding himself, caught between his culture and the modern world. |
On Showmax (read more) |
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| #8 Life after dark in SAFTA-winning documentary Six to Six Night after night, Taariq, Lungi and Pierre wait for people to die. They aren’t ghouls. They are three of the forensic pathology officers at one of Cape Town’s busiest morgues – Salt River Mortuary. |
On Showmax (read more) |
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| #7 See the trailer for Netflix’s El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie Fans will remember that in the final episode of Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman escaped his enslavement in one of his captors’ cars – an El Camino. The upcoming movie will tell us where it took him. |
On Netflix (read more) |
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| #6 Netflix plans a return trip to Hawkins (or does it?) Netflix has renewed the worldwide hit series Stranger Things for a fourth season and signed series creators and showrunners The Duffer Brothers to a multi-year film and series overall deal. |
On Netflix (read more) |
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| #5 Five Ryan Murphy shows to binge-watch He’s a six-time Emmy winner and won a Tony Award for The Boys in the Band, which he’s adapting into a film to be released next year (starring Andrew Rannells of Girls and Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory). |
On Netflix (read more) |
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| #4 Watch the teaser for The Irishman, the new Scorsese on Netflix Cinephiles are in ecstacy after the teaser for the new Martin Scorsese came out, featuring “wise guy” trio Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci. Truly Netflix, you have ensembled the most ganster ensemble of all time. The Irishman is about organised crime in post-war America. |
On Netflix (read more) |
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| #3 Modern Family Season 10 There have been all sorts of rumours about TV’s favourite blended family, but only two can be confirmed at this time: Season 10 is the final season. And a “significant” character is going to die. |
On DStv Now (read more) |
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| #2 Orange is the New Black final season The seventh and last season of the Emmy-winning comedy-drama opens with an episode called The Beginning of the End, and after six years, it will come to an end with its 13th episode called Here’s Where We Get Off. |
On DStv Now (read more) |
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| #1 Sons of Anarchy – all seasons! Sons of Anarchy ran from 2008 to 2014 and can now be streamed from season 1 to 7 on Showmax. It’s gritty, graphically violent, intense, addictive… but most of all, it’s a story about family. |
On Showmax (read more) |
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Our randomized trailer pick of the week
Each week we take a number from 1 to 10 from our list of suggestions and put it through a randomizer to choose a trailer to show you. This week it landed on our number 7 spot, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie:
Picking up moments after the series finale of Breaking Bad ends, Aaron Paul is back as Jesse Pinkman in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, directed by Vince Gilligan, on Netflix October 11.
I. CAN’T. FUCKING. WAIT!!!!
Watkykjy staan op 26,873 post views in totaal sedert 1 November, 2019.
