‘Mommy Club Van Die Hoofstad’ is the latest cringeworthy instalment of the franchise. It’s pyjama TV that plays to stereotypes.
There’s more makeup in the show than substance, but for some cruelly intolerable reason, The Mommy Club, Hoofstad is somewhat watchable. Even if it is just to question everything you know about what you didn’t know until then.
Cryptic? Well, so is the rationale for making a show like this in the first place. It’s The Housewives Of, with offspring.
If television came with a recycling label, an anti-woke warning for stereotyping and an almost evangelical confirmation of the Boerewors curtain between Joburg and Pretoria, this is it.
Just like its Durban mommy Sugar and Spice predecessor, the programme is assembled from contrived situations that should have moral guardians caution about the brain-litter it leaves in its wake.
Because goodness me, do people really live in these manicured bubbles where, perhaps, the price of bread is as much of a mystery to them as the embarrassing typecasting.
Living in manicured bubbles
Ansu Viljoen, 30, is a qualified hydrogeologist and an influencer, a mother of two toddlers under four, and of course, a wife.
Then there’s Johandri Johnson, 33, who has turned Bikini Fitness into a career, claiming multiple titles while raising a one-year-old. She is also an influencer.
Crystal van der Burgh, 29, is a working mother of two who is engaged, busy developing a shopping centre, and keeping the wheels turning in a family business with her dad. Louise Volschenk, 38, runs a successful beauty business, has two children, and has somehow packed 12 years of marriage into the same calendar.
Then there’s former Mrs South Africa finalist Tessa Tullues, 36, a single mother of two, running her beauty business while also facing the unglamorous realities of an ongoing divorce.
The cast members are each impressive, in their own right.
But as a cackle of mommies in an unreality show, there’s just way too much clucking about.
Cringe-moments pepper the series, and admittedly, that’s exactly what makes it so enjoyable to watch now and then.
Still, it’s a damn-side more entertaining than sitting through the antics of the desperate housewives of Pretoria, Stellenbosch and Joburg, who all live cookie-cutter lives and pack as much glamour.
As interesting as watching paint dry
But, back to the cringe.
There’s the ‘sleep specialist’ that was called in to help Ansu settle her toddler into a better sleeping pattern.
The very same child that, at a dinner party setup at Chantel’s house, splashed paint all over the host’s couches.
Before that, fuelled on sweet, he decimated a pot plant in someone else’s home.
The very same child that was then sent home with dad. The very same mom whose kitten fight saw claws emerge early in the series. But it’s all so inanely droll.
In another scene, there’s a mom and kid’s picnic. Well, better put, the mom’s whining and wining with the kids babysat by the helpers. It’s a bit of a metaphor for most of the show, because while it’s The Mommy Club, there’s so much self-absorption going on that the kids’ part of the equation never really features beyond the nuisance factor.
At least, in the Sugar and Spice season, there was a semblance of positive parenting engagement.
Unless the Hoofstad is still stuck in the adage that kids should be seen, not heard. If so, the show’s on point.
So much self-absorption going on
Pyjama television doesn’t ask for brainpower, and shows like The Mommy Club deliver exactly that, but they still invite judgement.
Lots of it. And that is probably what makes it so attractive to audiences.
From homes that are stuck in Seventies décor or more modern interiors in tasteless pastiche of decades past, through to make up layers so deep that it needs scraping off with a grader.
Then there’s the personalities that often need a good antacid. Binging this show could result in indigestion or, worse, intellectual constipation. But it’s fun.
