XYZ SHOW IT'S A WRAP!

The old Men of Africa

XYZ SHOW, IT’S A WRAP! By Tony Mboyo

The much popular and hilarious Kenyan political television satire, the XYZ series finally closes its season 4 curtain much to the disappointment of its growing audience.  The show, which uses latex hand puppets to portray popular Kenyan political and social scenarios in a side-splitting and satirical manner, aired its season finale episode on the 10^th of July this year.  For the Kenyan audience, the season had been one of the most exhilarating and perhaps most dramatic since the inception of the show and many a fan felt that it ended just as it was getting sweet as a gum drop. 

The XYZ show, created by cartoonist Godfrey Mwampembwa who popularly goes by the pen name ‘Gado’, started airing in 2009 on Citizen TV and has since moved to KISS TV.  Currently the show boasts of over 120,000 likes just on its facebook page and the number keeps rising every day.

Despite it extensive popularity and growing demand among Kenyan audiences, the show has not been spared of woes and controversy, Season 4 saw the dramatic shift from Citizen TV to KISS TV after alleged differences between the show and the TV station. The shift was regarded as a plunge to many viewers who expressed their disappointment on social media platforms as many of the upcountry viewers do not receive the channel which airs only in an around Nairobi.  However the XYZ show producers were quick to remedy the situation by introducing a free streaming of the season’s episodes on their internet page.  Now, everyone with internet access around the world can view the season’s past and current episodes just by the click of a mouse.

XYZ Season 4 also saw the departure of the famous Jonah Lessit, as the show anchor and the introduction of a new show host, Keff Joinange who is actually a latex double for the deep voiced Jeff Koinange, a former CNN reporter and K24 presenter.  On a lighter note, the last time Jonah Lessit appeared on the show he was a pirate sailing the East African coast with a band of other bandits pillaging and plundering unsuspecting sailors and sea merchants.  On an even more dramatic twist, XYZ producers and crew were treated to a rare occasion when Jeff Koinange himself visited the XYZ shooting studios and demanded to meet with his latex double, Keff Joinange,  who was the more excited to meet his original as they shared a rather creepy moment at ‘the bench’.

The XYZ show audience is now hopeful that upcoming seasons will be even more thrilling as the country is gradually approaching 2012 which is regarded to many as a highly political year owing to the fact that the general elections are being earlier then.  Whether the show will survive the hot political landscape or not is a matter of wait and see, but to the Kenyan viewers the focus will obviously be on how XYZ will wade in the murky waters of 2012.

With great creativity and a focused production team the fans expect future episodes to be better as the sky can only be the limit.  We hope that season 5 will not take forever to get underway and quench the two months thirst of the fans. 

Happy season break XYZ.