Reality TV: The Real Housewives phenomenon is coming to Nigeria
The Real Housewives of Lagos.
© The Real Housewives of Lagos
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
In Nigeria, the first episode of the new reality show
The Real Housewives of Lagos
airs from this Friday on the South African video-on-demand service
Showmax
and is available in 40 countries.
The show follows the lives of wealthy women and the expectation is visibly very high around the six Nigerian protagonists.
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With our correspondent in Lagos
,
Liza Fabbian
They are lawyers, stylists, philanthropists or
Nollywood
actresses , mothers or divorcees and above all extremely wealthy.
Six women have been selected to take part in the reality show The Real Housewives of Lagos.
“
We will be able to observe the life of the rich in Lagos.
Glamour, fashion and we will see how these women manage their business, how they manage their family life and get a glimpse of their luxurious life.
They are going to take us through Lagos and make us feel this culture
,” explains Busola Tejumola, content director in West Africa for the South African group
Multichoice
.
A Nigerian production company,
Livespot 360
, was selected to film this 12-episode reality series over several months.
“
We love entertainment, parties and also knowing what our neighbors are up to.
This surely explains the success of reality TV in Nigeria.
For example, with the program 'Big Brother Naija', the participants become actors or influencers with millions and millions of followers
”, estimates Dere Art-Alade, the creative director of
Livespot 360
.
The
Showmax
service is counting on the interest of the huge Nigerian diaspora in particular to make
The Real Housewives of Lagos
a success .
• A successful series also in South Africa
The Real Housewives
franchise
is not its first attempt on the continent.
South Africa has already been entitled to two versions, that of Johannesburg since 2018, and that of Durban, since last year.
Reality series are multiplying in the country to show a different image of a very rich category of the continent, as in the new Netflix production "Young, famous and Africans".
But what image of women did the South African version of
The Real Housewives
offer viewers?
I think it's clear, in the “Real Housewives” of Johannesburg, that we are dealing with very rich women, who fit into this very particular model.
But most of these women are not housewives, rather have made careers, and many of them are depicted as having made it on their own.
It is also important to note that the majority of the cast of the "Real Housewives" of Johannesburg are black women, and the show wishes to celebrate the successes of these black women in post-apartheid South Africa, at least that is what that suggests.
Alexia Smit, professor at the Center for Media and Film Studies at the University of Cape Town
Claire Bargeles
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