'Having more than one wife," said Tom Green, scratching his head with the sharp end of a pencil, "can be hard work."

Tom Green knew what he was talking about. Tom Green is a devout Mormon, and as part of his Mormon responsibilities Tom has been called upon by his God to take - thus far - six different wives. At the same time.

You might have thought that a scriptural injunction to take half a dozen wives would be sound inducement to lay down your Bible quietly and take up your Nietzsche, but that is why you are not a Mormon. (At least, I assume you are not a Mormon. If you are a Mormon, what are you doing reading this column? Shouldn't you be out wooing, or something?)

One Man, Six Wives and Twenty-Nine Children (SABC3; Sunday; 9.30pm) was a lesson to us all. To take one wife, as Oscar Wilde said, may be considered misfortune. To take two wives is carelessness. To take five and six is to deserve everything you get. But those Mormons are made of stern stuff. They seem to have a greater tolerance for persecution than your common-or-garden martyr. Who needs to be crucified upside-down when you can have six ladies in gingham bonnets simultaneously saying, "Can't you turn off the television for five minutes? Didn't you watch enough cricket last weekend?" God be with you, Tom Green.

The show took us to Greenhaven, Tom's family compound, deep in the charmless desert scrub of Utah. Tom and his wives are the only green in Greenhaven - the rest of it is a circle of mobile homes drawn into a tumbledown laager on an oily, dusty, rubbly, dirtscrabble corner of God's forsaken land, coveted only by coyotes and rattlesnakes, inhabited by an unlovely brood of barefoot children and their barefoot mothers, thin women with pinched faces and stooped shoulders, turning their eyes ever heavenward, waiting for their allotted time with their husband, and ultimately their allotted time with God.

It was a fine documentary, so precise that it never had to resort to voice-overs. In an especially fine piece of narrative concision, one of Tom Green's 12-year-old sons dreamily tells the camera about his prospective girlfriend. "I really like her," he said, "and I think she likes me." We cut to Tom Green explaining that he is planning to take a seventh wife. He has a girl in mind; he has been consulting her parents. He holds up a photograph of the girl. We cut back to son holding up a photograph of his girl. It is the same girl.

That short sequence told us all about Tom Green, the miscommunications of an obscenely extended family, the confusion and blindness in the dusty heart of their laager, the trouble in store.

The documentary had no truck with messages or morals - it simply tried to make sense. It tried to tell, unobtrusively, a story.

By cruel contrast, it was followed by a local documentary. Soweto Gaieties (SABC3; Sunday; 10.30pm) was almost as bad as its title. The subject was genuinely interesting - following a pair of transvestites as they prepared for the gay Miss Soweto pageant - but the style of the show did them no justice at all.

To tell an effective story you must care most about the story. Local documentary-makers are too often intoxicated with the gimmicks and gizmos, camera techniques and edit suites, as though they are making multi-purpose business cards, to say: "See? I can make documentaries and commercials and music videos too!"

Soweto Gaieties set about anaesthetising the viewer with portentous background music and a sonorous voice-over by Peter Ndoro impersonating Darth Vader reading out the class essay of a verbose schoolchild. The scriptwriter was a certain Sophia de Fay. Sophia de Fay loves long words. She loves putting many long words in a sentence. If she can't think of long words, she'll put in any other words that come to mind. "The more of my words I can squeeze in," you can imagine Sophia de Fay thinking, "the better for all concerned."

The show starts off following Tebogo. Tebogo has a friend named Thatho who is also a cross-dresser. As though not trusting us to realise the implications of such a friendship, the script solemnly intones: "His close friendship, with a she-girl, Thatho, has given him the strength of empowerment!"

Now we see Thatho and Tebogo dancing for the camera. It is lovely footage - alluring lighting, ravishing colours, slow-mo, flashes, fades to black, sexy washes. It should be in a music video. Unfortunately, this is a documentary. All through the show there was a profusion, an effusion, an effulgence of pop video effects, of kooky camera angles, unmotivated close-ups, unexpected jangles of music. It was what local filmmakers mistake for creativity. That is not creativity. Creativity is about using your resources to tell your story, rather than string together a discontinuous sequence of eye-catching images.

The climax of the show is the finals of Miss Soweto. Will Thatho make it? Instead of letting the natural drama of the occasion do the work, the camera zooms tight on Thatho, cutting out the stage, the other contestants, the pageant announcer. Instead Sophia le Fay is here to talk us through it. Helpfully, the voice-over informs us of Thatho's anxiety. His pulse is racing, her stomach is churning... oh no! "He hasn't made it!" Thatho looks upset. Sophia le Fay tells us Thatho is upset. "Thatho sheds his dress," Sophia le Fay informs us poetically, "as he sheds his dream."

The story is over, but not quite. Sophia still has thoughts to share. "Life is not fair," muses Sophia le Fay in the voice of Peter Ndoro. "It is cruel and funny at the same time. Without the thorns, there can be no rose. Without the defeats, there can be no..." Fortunately, without the power supply to my television, there could be no more of that.