The opening shot of The Tribe (11 June) showed a young man of the Hamar tribe of southern Ethiopia, clad in traditional beads and a sarong, emerging from his straw-roofed hut and stretching in the morning sun. Then he pulled out his mobile phone. “Hello,” he said. Having run out of settings for fly-on-the-wall documentaries nearer home, Channel 4 has turned to an African village in the hope of finding the characters, intrigue and moments of comedy we expect from the genre. And producer/director Paddy Wivell has succeeded, although the best moments come not from the 20 cameras artfully installed in the four huts of the Ayke Muko family but from straightforward interviews with its members. The star is the patriarch, Ayke Muko himself. A man of advanced years, he continues to rul
11 June 2015, The Tablet
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