Muti is South African parlance for witchcraft. I hate that it is now a principal storyline in the high production values TV series Scandal! (e.tv Africa, Monday to Thursday 8.30pm). But I liked the subtle way in which the issue of the criminality in accusing someone of using practising witchcraft was written into the story. I still hate that it is taking attention away from a more pressing matter, the one about a gagged journalist; after-effects of newsroom politics in which a serious but loss making newspaper (The Voice) gets “killed” while a sensational rag (Scandal!) is nourished.

You have to hand it to the sidelined Jacques’ ingenuity in how he goes about spiting his dominatrix boss Donna (she refused to grant him a column on the ongoing rugby World Cup) in the revamped Scandal!. He shoots a video revealing a taped mouth and bound hands. A tickertape message runs across the screen highlighting his plight. Boss lady summons him and luckily for him, his immediate editorial supervisors have his back.

Fact is our own The Hostel could garnish those lame limes recited by its avalanche of talking blonde heads with a couple of issue-driven storylines. There was more laying down the law on Rhythm City (e.tv Africa weekdays 7.30pm, omnibus Saturday 10.30am). Toyi-toyi is SA vernacular for protesting, demonstrating, et al and trust the old wives club to wield banners to protest the Kilowatt hangout’s “tight T-shirt” night. With their husbands emptying their wallets at the bosoms of the ravishing bar lady Niki, a protest seemed very much in order, well until Suffo reminded the posse of chanting women to get a permit first. And here we were thinking Kayihura’s boys were overstepping what should be a constitutional right!

Would the more scientifically accepted hypnosis qualify as muti? There was relief in the Le Reoux household on Isidingo (ITV weekdays 7.30pm, omnibuses Saturday 11pm & Sunday 10am) when Marlien, the family matriarch, came out of her mute self to say a couple of coherent sentences. The noose is tightening around resident femme fatal Cherel [de Villiers Haines Le Roux]’s neck, that’s if daughter Sophia can beat her conniving step-mom to finding the suicide note her mother Marlien wrote (that she hid it in a Bible may explain her protracted healing).

In other Isidingo news, the hostage crisis at top cop Priyah’s station rekindled the flame with ex (and father to her child Hiranya) Frank. Hubby Rajesh (the iron clad boss at On TV!) had better eat his carrots if he still cannot read the divorce writing on the wall. There may be a good moral to Rajesh/Priyah being a two-income household but that may not make up for the romantic inconvenience that is their marriage of convenience.