Dami Elebe knows how to write a good TV script, and this is from keenly knowing her audience. In a small way, she is Nigeria’s version of Shonda Rhimes, crafting the hit web series Skinny Girl in Transit for Ndani TV, which contributed immensely to the platform’s growing youthful infrastructure.
Without a doubt, Skinny Girl in Transit was Elebe’s big break, after writing scripts for so long and with thoughts of giving up. The show was also a success for online television, a wildly receptive trial balloon in its plus size protagonist that forged millennial approval. Early in the year, Bella Naija’s #BNBehindTheScenes referred to Elebe as the “Baddest Scriptwriter,” and, at one time in 2017, Elebe sermonised on Twitter about her experience with body-shaming.
Arguably, Nigerian television has never had visible, plus size writers that are women. Groundbreaking in itself for Elebe, who not only has to navigate the inherent gender politics in the field but also the size politics that has marginalised a subset of women.
Other Ndani TV properties soon had Elebe’s touch: Rumour Has it, a show which she co-wrote and polarised critics in the early half of its first season. For Jemeji, the Badagry-shot cable series on Africa Magic, Elebe was fielded into a writers’ room alongside Chris Ihidero (MTV Shuga Naija) and Bibi Ukpo (Tinsel), helmed by head writer Tunde Aladese (Hotel Majestic).
Taken together, these TV projects are indeed commendable, bearing the enthusiastic mark of a writer seemingly and blissfully circumscribed in the world of television. Well, until recently, when Elebe tweeted that her debut movie From Lagos With Love will be out in August.
Hello guys. This is going to be my first produced movie. It comes out on the 31st of August, 2018. Please share and RT. I do hope you all watch and enjoy!
Thanks for all the support! pic.twitter.com/coBfP18rJr— Name: (@DamiElebe) July 19, 2018
How stunned I was in receiving the announcement, and also ambivalent. From Lagos With Love…where do I even start? Is it a dramedy? romcom? There’s every reason to believe the movie has Elebe’s signature elements, the urban glitz and middle class bourgeois and hyperbolic drama, which hews closely to the template of your average Nollywood movie.
But Nollywood is in glamorous ruins, a landscape of bad movies and the unblinking capitalism of cinema dominion, so much so that this year’s AMVCA nominations were tragically mediocre. From Lagos With Love parades a modest cast in Sharon Ooja and Nonso Bassey, who is capably nurturing both acting and singing careers. Also, Shaffy Bello and Damilola Adegbite and, uhm, Jon Ogah, who is now trying to tell us that he can act. OK, got it.
As it is, From Lagos With Love feels likes an expensive gamble, and critics won’t be kind to Elebe if it turns out to be a mess. I hope it’s not, for her sake.
When Bernard Dayo isn’t writing about pop culture, he’s watching horror movies and reading comics and trying to pretend his addiction to Netflix isn’t a serious condition.
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