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Turkish telenovelas coming to FOX Life

Cape Town – Smoking-hot, beautiful people. Heart-wrenching romance. Love and loss for the ages. But not so much lust and also a little bit more cloth over the collarbone.

Get ready for Turkish telenovelas that will soon be sweeping up South African and African viewers in passionate stories on FOX Life (DStv 126 / StarSat 133).

Tracey Gilchrist, director of content, scheduling and acquisitions at FNG Africa, has revealed that they have acquired and are scheduling Turkish telenovelas – a genre that's recently been taking the entire TV world by storm.

Gilchrist said the exclusively acquired Turkish telenovelas that are currently being translated and dubbed into English, will run on weekdays at 18:25 on FOX Life – FNG Africa's recently started female-skewed channel that has just turned one year old.

It didn't provide a specific starting date for the telenovelas, but Channel24 understands that it will kick off within a month as a more modest counter to the more provocative, more skin-baring South American telenovelas seen on channels like Telemundo Africa and EVA on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform.

To kick off, FNG Africa will show the "less flesh" Turkish telenovelas like Heartbeat and Lodestar (originally known in Turkey as Rüzgarin Kalbi and Coban Yildizi respectively).

According to sources, Heartbeat will be FOX Life's first Turkish TV delight if the dubbing is completed in time, with Heartbeat that is scheduled for a start on weekdays on FOX Life from Monday, 2 October at 18:25.

Universal Cinergia Dubbing started work on dubbing both telenovelas into English, both made for FOX Turkey, just weeks ago.

From Greece to Pakistan, from Chile to Afghanistan and even Ethiopia, the world is catching on to the well-produced and mesmerising "Turkish super soaps" that are starting to beat South America on their own TV genre turf and driving record ratings in almost every country they're being aired.

Interestingly, although owned and funded by men, several of the Turkish soap productions actually have women as scriptwriters.

In September last year, the BBC reported on the world's growing fascination with Turkey telenovelas.

One South American viewer told the BBC that "the Turkish productions are very high quality and don't have the Hollywood cliches and stereotypes. When I started to watch these dramas, I realised how tired I was with all the violence and sex of American TV."

More about the telenovelas

In Heartbeat the handsome Rüzgar is in love with Meltem but she dies just before their wedding day and her heart is donated to a sick girl. Zeynep, discovers her fiancé is cheating on her and heads to a small town. Rüzgar and Zeynep fall in love – not knowing that Zeynep is the recipient of his first love's heart.

In Lodestar, an ongoing telenovela, Zühre, the most beautiful girl in Kapadokya is being forced to marry a man she doesn't love.

On her wedding night she runs away, but is spotted by the man's son, Zekkar, a nightclub boss from Istanbul. He doesn't realise she's supposed to be his "stepmother" and falls in love. Meanwhile Zühre is being protected by Seyit, a handsome stonemason who also falls in love with her.

FOX Networks Group Africa will kick off with shorter Turkish telenovelas on FOX Life to first test the African waters with drama series that don't have the long and stretched out episode order runs of South American telenovelas.

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