Homophobic laws in Africa are the reason Nurses Season 4 was suddenly taken off-air.
If you are a Nurses fan, then, you will know that Season 4 suddenly stopped airing on Telemundo last week. The telenovela was replaced with a re-run of Decisions without any explanation from the channel or NBC Universal.
Fans of the series in different African countries have been asking questions but there have been no real answers.
Recall that Alvaro and Fernando became a gay couple in season 3 of Nurses. And they are trying to adopt the niece of Alvaro whose mother died some time back.
However, according to entertainment blogger and TVSA member Insidus, Nurses was taken off-air because of the homosexual content on the show, which also broadcasts in countries where homosexuality is illegal like Uganda.
Telemundo’s DStv broadcast feed is the same throughout Africa, meaning laws that apply in one country impact on another as everyone sees the same series.
Nurses disappeared off TV within a month of Uganda passing the draconian, tyrannical Anti-Homosexuality Act that calls for life imprisonment for anyone “convicted” of engaging in a s3xual act with someone of the same s3x and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”.
Also, the promotion or normalization of homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment for up to 20 years and fines.
Here’s a link to it: Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act
Just after this threat by Cameroon’s media regulator, titled Warning:
The CNC calls on the promoters of channels broadcasting programs showing scenes of homosexuality in Cameroon to immediately withdraw these programs, which violate the law, morality and customs of our country, on pain of the outright suspension of the media concerned.
These events must be why the show was pulled off-air.
TVSA asked Telemundo why Nurses is off-air and if it’s because of this. They didn’t give details, but reading between the lines it is.
Their statement read, “We intend to comply with local broadcast regulations in each market where we broadcast and are adjusting the programming as necessary.
It’s clearly a sudden and unexpected turn of events for the network as the channel’s July highlights were released before this happened and Nurses was included as per usual.
Initially, the Nurses Season 4 catch-up was available in South Africa on Universal TV+ on DStv Now. However, now, fans can only see until Episode 34. There should be over 40 episodes loaded so far so it looks like there’s a chaos with that too.