I like the idea of a Nigerian television show about music but Accelerate TV's Indigo makes me wonder if I'd be better off being run over by a car repeatedly

What happens when a web series is funded by people who don't really care about it? How stupid must they think us to believe that we'd be happy with just about anything produced? How long are we supposed to pay attention to something that seems to be about nothing? How bad can the shots be before the director, an actor/actress, the runner, an intern, just about anybody says, "isn't this a bit too dark?" How bad does the sound have to be before anyone tells the people behind Indigo that you can't have 25 different sound levels in a ten minute episode of television? Has anything ever made you wonder if watching paint dry would be a suitable occupation? Indigo makes you think all of these things.


Before I begin in truth I must apologise to you, because I do not know who plays what role. The creators of the show, in their infinite wisdom did not provide anyone with a list of their cast and the corresponding roles that they played. To find out who was who, I had to google the names of the actors to see what they looked like. I'm not the best with faces so I'll get things wrong. Bear with me.

The synopsis of the first episode is, "What would you do if you found your ex in your apartment, and he refuses to leave? What would you do if you got to your house and found your boo’s ex there? Would you fight him? Would you believe she is cheating? Would you break up with her? Find out in the first episode of #Indigo."

From the synopsis you'd probably think that it was a sketch of some sort, but it isn't. It is a webseries that supposedly has a plot of some sort. And while the initial premise is amusing in theory it fails as a summary of any sort because as far as I can tell that's not really what the show is about. If I, Afam, a blogger that has nothing to do with the show (Thank God!) am the one telling you (Indigo team) that then there's clearly something wrong. The show's about a guy called Desmond (played by I haven't the slightest) and a girl called Myra (played by Munachi Abii) who used to date and their adventures in the music industry.

I would love for music to be featured on Nigerian television, but this is not at all what I wished for. The acting is terrible. The script is worse. And it's a technical fail. I'll start with the latter because I think that it's the easiest part to get right. The show often opts for oddly melancholic backing music that has no place on that show; the camera frequently loses focus for no apparent reason; some shots are much too dark; I hate its washed out look and; the sound is terrible. All of these problems render the show unwatchable. Even the most forgiving viewer would take issue with the fact that the the show seems to have been created with the singular intention of driving its viewers to suicide with the technical cock ups alone!

You have to feel sorry for the actors because if they'd known that their mediocre to absent performances were to be displayed so poorly they wouldn't have signed on. In the first episode, Myra comes home to find her ex boyfriend waiting for her. He wants her back but she's moved on to a chap called Kazeem who's coming over to Myra's. They run into each other. Desmond is rude, and Myra is frustrated. I've just realised that my summary of the show is better than the show itself. It isn't much of a feat, but I'll take what I can get. I do have to commend the actor that plays Desmond, on a different show he'd be the mildly funny drunk villain with an unfortunate addiction to cheap drugs, but on this one he's painful to watch and it isn't his fault. He's trying really hard and failing at it. Watching him is like watching a guy fall flat on his arse every time but at least he's trying. He's trying so hard that it hurts.

From there we move to Uche. He's a contestant on an X- Factor like competition and he's up for eviction and he's hooking with another contestant. There's some singing, but it pales in comparison to the well thought out productions we've become accustomed to thanks to the efforts of Glle, Smash, and almost every video of someone singing on youtube.

The worst thing about the show is that it only leaves you confused as to how you just wasted ten minutes of your life when you could have been doing something far more rewarding likestaring blankly into space. You can't take it seriously. The only question you'll after seeing even a minute of it is, how is it that Access Bank has anything to do with this? They're a business so we'll assume that the reason why they've imposed their youtube channel - Accelerate TV - on us is that they want to make money off it's powers somehow, but they won't because there's only one thing you'll be doing after you sit through a minute of it. You'll be running for your life.