A comedy series that treated its audience like they truly deserved

Milling, teeming and seething are some of the apt adjectives that can be used to describe how scores of holidayers thronged the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel to see the premiere of Kejetia vs Makola.

Thanks to a highly effective social media marketing campaign - that saw one of its short clips garner over 130,000 views - the highly anticipated comedy series got the audience it truly deserved.

The premiere in Accra over the long holiday weekend saw the screening of three yet to released episodes of the legal sitcom which run for about 45 minutes each. Within the first thirty seconds of the screening, the conference room of the hotel was overcome with loud boisterous bouts of laughter.

Kejetia vs Makola revolves around three main characters, the prodding Judge Loius Lamis, the maverick Lawyer Nti and the pretentious Lawyer Nebuchadnezzar.

The series witnesses the two legal luminaries having to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the glove wearing lawyer Nti who claims to have studied at the fictional Ghana School of The Law, Kejetia. Nti’s bad grammar, lack of understanding of basic legal principles such as lawyer-client privilege and mannerisms bright cheers to the courtroom.

Every episode sees lawyer Nti, a plaintiff’s lawyer, bring a seemingly unwinnable case in front of Judge Lamis. His pro bono clients include a trotro mate who wants to commit suicide and a bodybuilder who was taught a spiritual lesson in a fight with a lanky man from the Volta Region.

For the most part, Lawyer Nti, doesn’t win his cases but he manages to be the life of the court and at the end of each episode when the court is adjourned, viewers are promised another 45 minutes of laughter in the next episode.

Despite being excruciatingly funny with an infectious soundtrack by George Spratz, the series plays on a long-held stereotype of illiteracy about people from Ghana’s Ashanti Region and does little to challenge that view.

Perhaps, the biggest criticism of Kejetia vs Makola is that organisers should have anticipated the sold-out status the screening got. That would have meant a new venue as the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel is not fit for the screening of a film. Although, two shows of 6 PM and 8 PM were originally planned, an unscheduled 10 PM show had to be added to make up for the numerous people who turned up.

However, there is reprieve for the tens who were turned away and the many others who were stuck at the back of the conference room and could not see much of the screening. That is because starting July 22nd, the series will be aired on Joy Prime to viewers across the country.

The success that Kejetia vs Makola, independently produced by Liezer-Legacy, only goes to prove that there is indeed great talent in the country to merit a total wipeout of Indian and Mexican telenovelas from Ghanaian television screens with the investment into these foreign programs challenged into local productions instead.