From Vlach magic to Kleopatra, Serbia in the 1990s was a great place to be a charlatan. Or was it all just performance art?
Daytime television in Serbia is today dominated by much the same fare as in the rest of the world: kitsch talk shows, reality programmes, infomercials.
But in the 1990s it was a very different story. Back then, the daytime (and at times, the prime-time) airwaves were the site of a strange phenomenon that took the country (and to an extent, the entire Western Balkans region) by storm a slew of televised oracles and prophets offering succour to masses traumatised firstly by the early signs of the dissolution of the ailing socialist system, then the war, and then its aftermath.