Tanzania: After Will Smith, BBC Makes Appearance On Local Streets

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Arusha Times (Arusha)

6 September 2008
Posted to the web 8 September 2008

Arusha

Arusha is abuzz with top-notch, world class showbiz activities and several parts of the "Little Big Town' have turned into a Hollywood of some sort.

Highly rated actors, performing under the auspices of the British Broadcasting Corporation are camping at The Arusha Hotel to spearhead the success of a situation comedy (Sitcom) to be broadcast worldwide under the name of "Taking the Flak".

But the crew and what they intend to do in Arusha became talk of the town only after Will Smith, an American actor and rapper who has enjoyed success in three major entertainment media in the United States and described by the Newsweek as the most powerful actor on the planet, had left the hotel and Arusha last weekend. He was in the country as UNICEF goodwill ambassador. He visited some health projects.

Shooting of Taking the Flak started in Arusha this week and will continue in various locations for two months employing hundreds of locals.

Pilot for Taking the Flak started to be filmed in January 2007 in Kenya, originally entitled The Calais Rules but the project was shifted to Arusha mainly because of the civil unrest that followed Kenya's last year's General Elections.

Two of the writers, Tira Shubart and Sandra Jones are journalists, and the series are filmed by an award-winning news cameraman. The show also features guest appearances from famous BBC journalists such as George Alagiah, Sophie Raworth and Dermot Murnaghan. Others starring are Martin Jarvis, Doon Mackichan, Bruce Mackinnon, Rhashan Stone and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith.

Most of the storylines are based on Shubart's experiences working with John Simpson, who she worked with for eleven years. One of the show's main characters, David (played by Jarvis), is based partly on him.

The Sitcom coming out in 2009 is about a team of journalists reporting on a small African war.

But to the "delight" of most Arushans, the war will be fought in Arusha's streets one of them being a street off Sokoine road by the CRDB bank running northwards to Arusha's Central Bus Station, a perfect location that may reminiscent last month's armed robbery in that street.

In the robbery incident, four armed, mean-looking gangsters, one of them a woman, stormed into an internet café at about 4.00 pm, ordered patrons to freeze, shot a fishmonger nearby and made away with millions of shillings, an assortment of cell phones and airtime vouchers. The incident occurred a few paces from the CRDB bank along the busy Sokoine road.

An attendant of the café told reporters after the incident that when the four robbers entered the café she thought they were just normal customers only to find herself being held by the neck and a pistol pointed to her body.

But "Taking the Flak" will not be so real, mean and life threatening. It will be simply a sitcom: An acerbic, authentic and caustic comedy that covers the entire progress of a small African war, as seen through the eyes of a team of journalists sending back the nightly reports for the BBC News at Ten.

According to information obtained on the internet, the team includes the smooth, veteran correspondent; the harassed, but infinitely resourceful, producer; and the green and gauche rookie stringer, dropped into a hotel and forced to choose between a room on 'the shooting side' and 'the mortar side'.

The Hotel where part of the acting will take place is the Equator off Boma Road, normally a favourite location for receptions and a drinking hole for local and visiting executives. For the Sitcom purposes the hotel has been christened "The New Waterbuck Hotel".

The sitcom summary continues: "Journalists in war zones live in a state of perpetual bloody war - with themselves, their organisation, their colleagues, their competitors and their loved ones. So, if they can't get themselves embedded with the invading forces, they'll get embedded with each other.

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