Top 5 Best TV Shows Zimbabweans Watched In The 1990’s
When our kids get to asking us about yesteryear, we speak glowingly of the things we used to do, places we used to go as well as the shows we’d watch. Thanks to ZBC TV some of those shows from the last 1980’s up to the late 1990’s are still being screened on air (talk about repeats of repeats). But there are those shows that had us glued to our screens, that would cause us to make sure we were at our best behavior in order to be allowed to watch TV that evening. Sometime we even had to sleep in the afternoon to be granted the privilege.
As a quick bit of history, Zimbabwe had two TV channels during the early to mid 1990s: TV 1 (countrywide) and TV 2 (Harare and its environs). TV 1 began at 15:30, starting with this multi-colored screen that would get the ball rolling. TV 2 began at 17:00. The two channels would run until 23:30 and 22:15 respectively, you were very privileged to get to watching tv until those hours.
1. Martin
Though appearing in the late 90s to early 2000s, Martin Lawrence’s humor punctuated our Thursday evenings. Martin was a sassy sitcom centering on a radio and television personality named Martin Payne. The series focuses on Martin’s romantic relationship with girlfriend Gina, his job changes from a radio personality to a television personality, and the variety of friends Martin hangs out with along the way: the loud-mouthed and sassy Pam and his best friends Tommy and Cole.
2. Santa Barbara
Late on a Friday night, just after 9pm, this long-running soap opera centered on the lives of a wealthy Capwell family, living in Santa Barbara, California, and the other families such as the Lockridges, Andrades and Perkinses. With characters such as Mason, Santana, Cruz, C.C. when our parents allowed this soap opera formed many discussions on Saturday mornings.
3. MacGyver
Coming onto our screens on a Friday night just after the early evening news at 6pm, MacGyver was a different kind of hero: he didn’t use weapons, was afraid of heights, and was an expert at making complicated machines out of ordinary things quickly. He worked in the employ of The Phoenix Foundation, a think tank dedicated to improving mankind. MacGyver also had an archenemy, Murdoc, who sought to kill MacGyver many times, often through the use of ruses and elaborate traps.
4. Knight Rider
This was a TV show that forced you to drop all that you were doing and get to your seats 10 minutes before the show started. Missing it was taboo, as you were not able to join in with your friends and talk about what had transpired that week. The adventures of Michael Knight and his incredible super-car K.I.T.T. who was elected by a dying billionaire, Wilton Knight, Michael worked for the Foundation for Law and Government with the job of rooting out evil that were above the law, with only his trusty car!
5. Tour Of Duty
Playing on a Wednesday night, after the main news and weather report this drama series about the Vietnam War had us fixated to our screens for a whole hour. It focused on a single platoon of young U.S. soldiers through their one-year tour of combat duty in Vietnam during the late 1960’s.
