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I don’t normally watch much so-called ‘reality’ shows on TV as most of the time I don’t think there’s anything real about the content or those taking part, but merely exaggerated displays of human emotions hyped up purely to get the viewers’ rating by the station that airs them and for the contestants, their little fifteen minutes of fame that might put a bit of meaning and sensation in their lives. In any case, being in the news business my interest is in real issues and not concocted ‘reality’ programs.

However, lately ‘real’ issues and ‘reality’ shows seem to become indistinguishable, at least in terms of the sensational content, the motley of personae involved, the way the drama unfolds and yes, the amount of viewing audience they commandeer.

News is no longer the truth abut who did what, where, how and why, but now more of a series of admission of sex, lies and videotapes played out in the most public of all spaces.

If you want a bit of titillations and a good snigger about other people’s sexual misconduct and liaisons, no need to watch some over-the-top sinetron on prime time TV, but simply tune in to watch the court proceeding aired live all day long (even for the children to watch) on the former KPK chief’s shenanigans with a young golf caddy in a hotel room.

Yes, there is murder here too – of the girl’s boyfriend-cum-husband - coldblooded execution-style in broad daylight by some paid assassins. Stuff that only fiction writers with overactive imagination could normally pull off.
Then there are other equally juicy stuff such as extortion, threats, bribes and money. Or the promise of lots of money as following its trail would require the deductive skill of one Sherlock Holmes or the astute mind of Miss Marple. Who was guilty? How was it done? Where did the money go?

And then of course, the lies. No self-respecting soap opera or television drama could pull the audience without a good dose of intrigues, conniving, machinations, dirty tricks and plenty of good old-fashioned lies. True to the script where every episode must end with a new twist, the KPK versus Police epic saga, has so far managed to take the biscuit when it comes to springing new surprises and unearthing more implausible plots.

At every turn we are kept at the edge of our seats, biting our fingernails. What other surprises are in store?
Fortunately almost everybody involved it seems, lies. This makes the suspense even keener. If everybody lies, then who is actually telling the truth? But more pertinently, what is the truth and is there a truth to begin with?

And like a soap opera producer desperate to stretch the episode longer and longer even as he is running out ideas, more and more new characters are wheeled out. The money was not given to this person after all, but to that person, who didn’t hand it over to the people he was supposed to but to somebody else called Yulianto who by the way, no one’s ever heard of and probably doesn’t exist or is no longer on this planet. And where, by the way is the money? Why, with Yulianto of course.

Thus the plot thickens. Adding colour to the whole thing is the series of mind-boggling but riveting tapped conversations played for the whole country to follow and then some badly taken videos purporting some information that far from shedding light to the case, merely muddy the whole issue.

What drama does not have the good guys versus the bad guys? Of course, the baddies are those suspect-looking ones in uniforms: the overweight, smug-looking police and the shady, cloaked judges with shifty eyes and greasy avaricious hands. And just to make matters more riveting, there are characters that vacillate between good and bad depending on how the plot is revealed and whether we see him smoking or dabbing his eyes.

Did I mention the tears? There are plenty of them too. Each time beautifully orchestrated to generate the maximum effect from the beholder. They range from the tears of supposedly-contrite perpetrator Anggodo, who conveniently shed a few drops when cornered into a public confession, the lachrymose responses of the various wives of the accused as they professed the innocence of their spouses and no doubt as more and more of the actors in the whole drama position themselves as victims, we will see yet more sobbing and dabbing of the eyes.

So much for the state of this country’s headline news. With all this drama and indignity, no wonder the president is quite happy to steer clear of this whole mess. However, he should do well to put a final chapter on it once and for all before he finds himself written into the script as a new twist in the plot and the beginning of a new season of this corruption case series.

(Desi Anwar: first published in Tempo English)