Ndani TV has made a name for itself in the industry for quite a number of things including its largely followed YouTube webseries’ – such as “Skinny Girl In Transit“. However, this year, a different side of its reputation was made glaring after it launched and abruptly abandoned its webseries “Oga Pastor“, without any explanation and after a few episodes had already aired.
Needless to say, that it’s for this reason that when another series was announced, it was met with hesitant stares. And when a few days prior to its release, the advertised name was changed from “F.O.M.O” to “Phases”, the hesitation intensified amongst the audiences. But now that the series managed to make it to its final episode of the season, I guess we can all breathe freely and finally talk about it.
Congratulations to @ndaniTV‘s #PHASES for surviving until its season finale was aired!
Many before you had died earlier deaths, some died even after they thought their survival was guaranteed, you took on a whole new identity during the journey but in the end you SURVIVED 👏🏼
— Oge (NR) (@NollywdREinvntd) November 25, 2019
The Ten Episode series, Phases, stars Tosin Ibitoye, Asa’ah Samuel, Tobi Bakre, Tomike Adeoye, Bukola Oladipupo, and Elma Mbadiwe and is billed as a show exploring the complexities of friendships and relationships especially through the eyes of the central character – Sunkanmi. Now most of the words used in the line above are word for word from the Ndani TV website and I have qualms with a lot of it. But let’s focus on the term “complexities”. I find it to be an interesting choice of word for such an overly simplified storyline with such one dimensional characters and writing that does not even pretend to try.
THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Tosin Ibitoye plays Sunkanmi in Phases. And if this is your first time seeing him on screen, you might be inclined to believe that he is a dreadful actor – incapable of emoting or bringing any life to the character that he plays. However, let’s take a minute to look at the character of Sunkanmi himself. He is simply characterized as a 20-something/30-something year old geek with no social life who also happens to be a virgin. Even though his best friend is a woman, he is grossly lacking in any skills when it comes to communicating with the other sex. And even when the table is set out perfectly before him he somehow manages to ruin it time and time again. Later on, by some stroke of luck (or as we call it on screen – artistic license), he manages to end up with two gorgeous women in his life. Yet, despite all the time he spent single, he still doesn’t know what he wants so he somehow manages to mess things up with both women.
Fantastic! Except that even Disney channel in the early 2000s (with a target audience of teenagers) managed to create characters with more dimensions and motivations. Even after 10 episodes, if you were to pull out the character of Sunkanmi into various real life situations and ask the audience “what do you think Sunkanmi would do in this scenario?”, as long as it wasn’t a caricature moment, no one would be able to answer that question accurately. It’s actually sad to think that after many years of Ndani dominating the space – as well as a clear abundance of resources – they still choose not to prioritize the quality of the stories they tell. Instead choosing to go the easy route for predictable storyline and easy laughs.
Which brings me right around to the writing. There is a scene in this series after Tunde discovers that her fiance had been cheating on her, where he comes over to beg for her forgiveness, she starts to go off on him and he tells her to ‘calm down’, then she responds with, “never in the history of calming down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to”. Am I the only one who has seen the meme/tweet with this exact same wording making its rounds in the social media sphere? I have two questions, first of all what degree of confused writing causes a person to integrate a meme into the lines especially in a scene that’s meant to be emotional? And two, who actually talks like this when they are fighting with someone? And it was not just that solitary line, from cringe worthy lines like “I am not a musician but I can play your g-string” to numerous others, “Phases” will have you questioning your own sanity for actually voluntarily watching it.
The experience here is possibly similar to the Fyre Festival – on paper everything seems great, except when you go in you quickly realize that it’s a scam. The photography is beautiful, the locations are top notch, the costumes, the makeup and all the fluff is a solid sell. However, when it comes to the content it’s quite empty, uninspired and confusing. But don’t worry, if you managed to make it through the whole season, there’ll surely be a second coming soon.
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