YMMV / Shaka Zulu

• Awesome Music: "We Are Growing" by Margaret Singana, which serves as a very epic theme song for this show.
• Fair for Its Day: It aired in 1986, during the later years of apartheid. Despite that fact and the show's 19th century historical setting, it features a predominantly black cast, depicts European colonialism in a not-so-flattering manner; and the titular protagonist is an intelligent, fully fleshed-out and (semi-)sympathetic character, even despite his moral ambiguity and more horrifying traits.
• Magnificent Bastard: King Shaka Zulu was born into the Zulu tribe to an arrogant prince and a commoner girl. Defending his mother's honor, Shaka and his maternal relatives were expelled, but when Shaka returns as a young man he publicly defies his father's wishes for him to become a Zulu warrior, fleeing from his soldiers to instead join the army of the Mthethwa Paramountcy, whose current King he once nursed back to health. Shaka singlehandedly revolutionizes tribal warfare, allowing him to utterly annihilate rival tribes, gain revenge on his past enemies, and take over his late father's throne. Shaka manages to use the threat of an enemy tribe to bargain himself into becoming supreme commander, then declares himself King after his patron is unexpectedly assassinated. Shaka also cleverly uses the British expedition to his court for his own ends, using their technology to wipe out an enemy army, and to achieve immortality, or so he believes. He allows Lieutenant Farewell to return to Capetown with Shaka's representatives, but when he realizes that they tricked him he starts plotting revenge while damning the rest of the world after his mother dies. A powerful, dangerous, charismatic ruler, Shaka returns to his court only to Face Death with Dignity, with even his assassins remaining in awe of him after his downfall.
• Narm: The scene where the British expedition lose their ship in a storm and wash up on a beach is positively silly, with the overwrought dramatic music, constant cuts between different members of the crew swimming on the shorelines with horses and goats, throwing around boxes and barrels... it's meant to look adventurous, but instead it looks like a bunch of people having the weirdest beach holiday ever.

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