In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of TLN sketches dealt with the deteriorating political situation in Yugoslavia that turned out to be a prelude to the Yugoslav Wars with some sketches proving prophetic, portraying a dystopian near-future—featuring the Yugoslav state being disintegrated, the city of Sarajevo divided between different newly-established states, a single family split into two clans warring over control of rooms in their apartment, UN peacekeeping forces adding fuel to the conflict, etc.—years before it became reality.
Kontić thus inherited the weekly Saturday morning 8-11am show from the previous host Jovo Došlo who had decided to leave the radio business altogether and move back to his hometown Mostar.
[3][4] In addition to music, Arslanagić—who had also been dabbling in prose writing, poetry, and graphic design—attracted Kontić's attention for his hobby of coming up with fictional bands' record covers with elaborate sleeves and liner notes.
Unbridled, raw, and unscripted, the debut segment done by Nele Karajlić, Zenit Đozić, Roki, Rizo Petranović, Zlaja Arslanagić, and Saša Kontić set the tone for what was to come: juvenile behaviour, infantile jokes, raucous street energy, with occasional cogent observation hinting at deeper social issues—all seldom heard prior on the buttoned-up state-run radio in communist Yugoslavia.
[7] The only adults in the mix were the Primus host and executive producer Boro Kontić and his sound engineer Husein Vladavić, both of whom were present behind the scenes during the segment tapings, but did not take part in them on the microphone.
[10] Though the attendance was spotty throughout its entire run on radio, five guys—Nele Karajlić, Zenit Đozić, Zlatko Arslanagić, Boris Šiber, and Dražen Ričl—established themselves as the core of the Top lista nadrealista segment over its initial weeks and months on the air.
According to Kontić, after completing several initial weekly radio segments with the new Top lista nadrealista kids, the catalyzing occurrence for his own personal realization about their potential and talent was witnessing the energy and crowd reaction at an early Zabranjeno Pušenje (at that point still a demo band fronted by Karajlić with Đozić on drums) club gig in June 1981 at the Cedus venue's small room in Sarajevo.
Uncoordinated and chaotic as well as airing at an unpopular timeslot, Saturdays at 10:15am, when most of its target demographic is fast asleep, the segment nevertheless rapidly gained popularity among young listeners and soon became the staple of Primus.
Though mostly free of direct political messaging or even mild allusions (and in no way injurious to SFR Yugoslavia's unquestioned values and sacred cows such as the Communist League, Comrade Tito, and People's Liberation Struggle so as to trigger a swift ban),[17] the segment's irreverence and increasing listenership still led to it being closely monitored by the Radio Sarajevo executives and consequently tweaked and censored as they deemed necessary.
By March 1983, some of the individuals in and around this often intertwining group of Sarajevo-based budding radio personalities, musicians, and comedians (most of them from the same Koševo neighbourhood) came up with an idea of putting all of that activity under a single definition banner—thus giving birth to New Primitives, an entity that functioned as something between a (sub)cultural movement and a cheap public relations ploy.
Since 1980, Karajlić had been fronting a garage rock group called Zabranjeno Pušenje together with his buddy and neighbour Sejo Sexon while early lineups included Đozić on drums with even Elvis J. Kurtović and Šiber spending some time in the band.
Good album sales combined with the satisfactory reception of the television episodes prompted the release of Top lista nadrealista radio material on audio cassette tape by Diskoton.
In addition to the radio five of Nele, Zenit, Para, Šiber, and Zlaja, the group was now joined by soon-to-be twenty-two-year-old Branko Đurić, local journalism student, musician, and aspiring actor, whom they had befriended at the Dedan kafana in Sarajevo where he had a knack for spontaneously entertaining the patrons by doing impressions.
Top lista nadrealista television show debuted on 2 June 1984, airing Tuesdays at 8:00pm on TVSa2 (TV Sarajevo's channel 2) while also shown in the rest of SFR Yugoslavia through the JRT system.
Another running bit portrays Fu-Do (played by Đozić), righteous vigilante well-versed in martial arts who protects the residents of several local Sarajevo neighbourhoods from various ills—including ruthless smugglers selling counterfeit clothing and public market (pijaca) re-sellers offering produce at exorbitantly marked-up prices.
By closely sifting through sketch ideas and their implementation, applying censorship as needed, the state-owned and party-controlled TV Sarajevo made sure the show stays away from overt political commentary and direct social criticism.
[22] Elvis J. Kurtović, a friend of the crew who was involved with the show in limited creative capacity, said in 2005: "Back when we were kids those Top lista nadrealista episodes were done by people who didn't know jack-squat about television and who shot everything in a single take and on the first try.
[25] As mentioned, in parallel with Top lista nadrealista, Karajlić also fronted a punk rock band called Zabranjeno Pušenje that released its debut album barely two months before the show's premiere on television.
Released by Jugoton, the record was out in limited circulation of 3,000 copies, a number clearly indicative of the label's modest expectations, especially after the poor sales of Elvis J. Kurtović & His Meteors' debut album barely a few months earlier.
Though none of the remaining five Top lista nadrealista performers were official Zabranjeno Pušenje members at this point, the two projects frequently overlapped, creating synergy that ultimately helped the popularity of both.
The seemingly innocuous statement delivered in jest in between two songs at a rock concert soon created a firestorm of controversy as various state and communist party bodies went after the band, targeting Karajlić specifically.
Nele Karajlić had become a veritable country-wide celebrity and a sought-after media personality with an eye-catching stage persona as the vocalist of Zabranjeno Pušenje that had put out two more successful albums since its breakout debut one and was about to release its fourth.
A couple of years earlier, Karajlić had overcome the potentially career-ending 'Marshal affair' with the initially bombastic verbal offense court case against him eventually quietly concluded with a symbolic monetary fine.
Nadrealisti thus reconvened in August 1989 without Ričl and Arslanagić, but with new protagonists Darko Ostojić, Dado Džihan, and Dražen Janković, as well as Srki Velimirović who kept behind the camera but contributed with sketch ideas and scriptwriting.
Finally, many, including Karajlić and Nadrealisti executive producer Terzić, talked about the second series sketches being infused with satirical techniques from the works of Radoje Domanović such as Vođa and Kraljević Marko po drugi put među Srbima.
It was not without personnel issues, including director Mandić essentially quitting early on due to creative differences with the guys before he got persuaded to continue on via intervention by executive producer Terzić who even enlisted Emir Kusturica's help in this regard.
A very popular sketch featuring "Swedish workers escaping their politically unstable homeland and seeking refuge in Yugoslavia only to find low-skill jobs for local ruthless small-business bosses", in addition to providing uproarious laughs through well-crafted dialogues, parodied the decades-long drain of Yugoslav nationals to Western Europe in search of better employment opportunities.
Another classic sketch, featuring Rade Pendrek, an exemplary and obedient forty-year-old street cop, having a nightmare about waking up in a country where uniformed intellectuals round up disobedient cops to university halls in order to forcibly correct their misbehaviour by having professors aggressively read Nietzsche and play Mozart to them as worker riot-squads armed with shovels roam the streets outside breaking up police protest rallies, humorously hinted and winked at a wide range of actual events: from the Žuta Greda incident during the Anti-bureaucratic revolution to the party-initiated media and institutional campaigns against dissenting University of Sarajevo professors and lecturers Nenad Kecmanović, Vojislav Šešelj, and Esad Ćimić.
On occasion, because of the content's political sensitivity, trickery had to be used by the show's network-assigned executive producer Slobodan Terzić in front of his TV Sarajevo superiors in order to ensure the intended material makes it to air.
[31] This was particularly true when the material featured overt mockery of Yugoslav political figures such as the now-famous 14th Yugoslav Communist League Congress dubbing sequence (framed by Nele and Đuro as "closing time at the Kod dva bela goluba kafana"), which was recorded on a Wednesday night in January 1990—less than a day before the scheduled airtime for that episode on Thursday in prime time—while the Congress itself had been held days earlier and its political fallout was still huge.