REAL HOUSEWIVES OF DURBAN | SHOWMAX

QuenchSA reported this week that season one of the Real Housewives of Durban is now a Showmax exclusive. The Durban version of the popular international franchise had been initially commissioned for 1Magic, but will now premiere weekly episodes on Fridays from January 29th on the streaming platform.

If you’ve seen the Johannesburg and international series in the franchise, you are au fait with the drill.

In a nutshell, the series will give us a glimpse into the opulent lives of six influential housewives in the Ethekwini upper echelons. We are expecting lots of glitter, beautiful gowns, tactful shade and the occasional champagne flute flying across the room in one of the heated dinners. The frenemy dinners always come.

The main cast features Ayanda Ncwane, Sorisha Naidoo, Kgomotso Ndungane, Nonkanyiso Conco, Annie Ludick and Nonku Williams. We’ve heard enough, bring out the girls we need to see the money filter.

BRIDGERTON | NETFLIX

Shonda Rhimes snapped, again, and we are here for it. Created by Chris Van Dusen and produced by Rhimes, the American period piece is based on Julia Quinn’s novels set in Regency London’s competitive marriage market.

The period drama series follows the Bridgerton family Violet, Dowager Viscountess Bridgerton; her four sons, Anthony, Benedict, Colin and Gregory and her four daughters, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca and Hyacinth. Also featured are the Featheringtons: Portia, Lady Featherington; her husband the Baron; their three daughters, Philippa, Prudence and Penelope, and their cousin Marina Thompson.

P-VALLEY | SHOWMAX

Late last year, the STARZ American drama television series launched premiere episodes simultaneously on 1Magic for linear viewing, and on Showmax for those of us who haven’t sat in front of an actual TV set in years. With a critics score of  100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a pretty high score on QuenchSA as of now, the series comes highly recommended.

P-Valley is an adaptation of a play called Pussy Valley, if you ever wondered about the title. The drama series follows the lives of a group of people working at a strip club called ‘The Pynk’ in the  fictional city of Chucalissa, Mississippi. 

The series is so good that I definitely wanted to work at the Pynk at some point (No cryin’ at the Pynk!). No skills or banging bod to be a stripper but the Pynk family is tight. So much heart and hope in a broken place.

Also two words; Uncle Clifford!

LUPIN | NETFLIX

The series chronicles the life of professional scammer Assane Diop, the only son of a Senegales immigrant who came to France looking for greener pastures for his son.

The point of departure comes with Assane’s father is framed for stealing an expensive piece of diamond jewellery from his boss, the rich and influential Hubert Pellegrini. Out of shame, he commits suicide in his prison cell, leaving behind an orphaned teenage son.

More than two decades later, inspired by a book about a crafty thief Arsène Lupin he’d received as a birthday gift from his late father, Assane plots revenge on the Pellegrini family. Using his charm and mastery in thievery and deception, he embarks on a mission to expose Hubert’s crimes.

POWERBOOK II: GHOST | SHOWMAX

The Power spinoff picks up the pieces Ghost left all over the place. Tariq and Tasha must survive.

By the time Tariq shot his father James ‘Ghost’ St. Patrick to his shocking death at nightclub ‘True’, we’d started guessing that the new show would most likely focus on the rise of Tariq as the new leader in the drug underworld of New York City.

After all, much of the ‘final betrayal’ season centered on how he and her mother Tasha had to go to extreme measures to eliminate Ghost for self-preservation. After trying to throw Tariq under the bus while abandoning Tasha and Tommy as a fair trade in his rise to the office of governor, it became clear that lines were drawn.

And that’s how Ghost dug his own grave. Running his mouth with the folk in his campaign, trying to get his son to do time in prison while he ascends within political ranks, leave Tommy to bury his skeletons and draw the final curtain on his dysfunctional marriage to Tasha.

THE WORLD OF THE MARRIED | NETFLIX

Someone pitched this show to me as ‘top tier Korean mgowo’ and I haven’t been able to forget it. There’s a reason The World of The Married surfaced as one of the most-streamed Korean shows in South Africa in 2020. It’s probably the same reason the television series is now the highest-rated drama in Korean cable television history.

This is a beautifully written, brilliantly portrayed and outstanding screenplay of love and tragedy. Not forgetting a mind-blowing display of how marriages can rank amongst the highest scams.

The Korean series follows the life of Ji Sun-woo (the woman’s wardrobe is a topic!), an established medical doctor with what appears to be a perfect life. She has a handsome husband Lee Tae-oh, with whom she has a teenage son Lee Joon-young.

Then the betrayal from her husband and close friend comes, and it goes downhill from there. You will have to watch the unravelling of some intense drama yourself.

BLING EMPIRE | NETFLIX

Take Kwa Mam’Khize, Rich Kids and Real Housewives of Johannesburg and add the most mesmerising aspects of the wealth flaunted on those shows. Take your time. Now, multiply those visuals of high life living and you get Bling Empire. Netflix’s new reality shows follows the lives of people with an insane amount of wealth. Old money; someone was saying there that “My husband could be the emperor of China and our son the Prince”.

Honey.

Kelly Mi Li in episode 8 “Will You Marry Me?” of Bling Empire: Season 1. c. Courtesy of Netflix © 2021

Bling Empire follows a wealthy group of Asian and Asian American friends who live in Los Angeles. These are collectors of haute couture, lovers of private jets with personal shoppers.  It’s a multi-billion network of friends with a flair for expensive shopping sprees, fabulous parties, and overspending for the fun of it. Lofty.

Browse The Latest Series, Movies, Reality Shows To Stream Online & Read Our Reviews, Recaps and More

TIGER | Binge now, first on Showmax

HBO’s two-part Tiger Woods documentary, Tiger, offers a revealing look at the rise, fall, and epic comeback of the global golfing icon.

At age 2, Tiger appeared on TV to show off his putting skills. His father, Earl, told the presenter that Tiger had picked up a golf club at three months and started playing at eight months. According to multiple voices in the documentary, including his own, Earl believed he had been chosen by God to groom Tiger for greatness, not just on the golf course, but as a world-changer on the scale of Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus or Mandela.

As if that wasn’t enough pressure, when Tiger went pro at 20 and soon after signed a multi-million-dollar endorsement deal with Nike, he was hailed as the first superstar golfer of colour in a traditionally white sport – as “Michael Jordan in long pants.” It was a lot of pressure, especially for someone who famously told Oprah he thought of himself not as African-American, but as “Cablinasian,” an abbreviation of his mixed Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian ancestry.

The documentary series contextualises Tiger’s triumphs and tragedies through never-before-seen footage and interviews with those who know him best, including his former caddy and close friend, Steve Williams; golf legend Sir Nick Faldo; Tiger’s first true love, Dina Parr; and Rachel Uchitel, the woman at the centre of the sex scandal that forever altered Tiger’s world, breaking her silence for the first time.

Based on the 2018 New York Times No. 1 best-selling biography penned by Armen Keteyian and Jeff Benedict, Tiger is executive produced by Oscar winner Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and directed by Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, A Private War) and Emmy nominee Matthew Hamachek (Amanda Knox). Tiger has an 8/10 rating on IMDb, with Variety hailing it as “urgent and powerful viewing that withholds judgment, but nothing else.”

THE COMEY RULE | Binge now

With all eyes on America right now, the turbulent events surrounding the 2016 US election that brought Donald Trump to power come under the spotlight in the topical political drama The Comey Rule.

Ben Mark Holzberg www.benmark.ca

The four-part mini-series stars Emmy winner Brendon Gleeson (In Bruges) as Trump; Emmy winner Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom) as former FBI director James Comey; and Oscar winner Holly Hunter (Succession) as acting attorney general Sally Yates.

Based on Comey’s autobiography A Higher Loyalty, The Comey Rule is written and directed by Billy Ray, who was nominated for an Oscar for his script for Captain Phillips and also wrote the box office phenomenon The Hunger Games.

AV Club says it’s “damned compelling… with a real-life tale that still beggars belief and a fantastic group of actors to tell it,” while Entertainment Weekly says, “For the pro-Trump crowd, The Comey Rule is destined to be dismissed as more #FakeNews from liberal Hollyweirdos. For everyone else, it offers the uniquely punishing experience of repeating history even as we continue to live through it.”

SHOWBIZ KIDS | Stream now, first on Showmax

Written and directed by former Broadway child star Alex Winters (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), Showbiz Kids is a raw look at Hollywood and the toll that early success can have on young professionals.

Highlighting the shared experiences of prominent former child stars, the documentary features intimate, revealing interviews with the likes of Henry Thomas (Elliott in E.T.), Mara Wilson (Matilda in Matilda), Evan Rachel Wood, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Milla Jovovich.

Showbiz Kids has a 96% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus says, “Both a celebration of child actors and a cautionary tale about the profession, Showbiz Kids offers a revelatory perspective on the pitfalls and rewards of Hollywood stardom.”

The documentary’s soundtrack, by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy and his sons Sammy and Spencer, was nominated for Best Score at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.

BABY GOD | Stream now, first on Showmax

If you thought Three Identical Strangers was fascinating, Baby God will have you glued to the screen.

The HBO documentary is a haunting examination into the work of infamous Nevada fertility specialist Dr Quincy Fortier, a man who deceived countless women struggling to conceive by using his own sperm — without their knowledge or consent — to impregnate them.

Of course, when you have potentially hundreds of children, the odds increase that one of them will become a detective, and sign up to Ancestry.com. Using an at-home DNA kit, retired detective Wendi Babst discovers a slew of half-siblings she never knew she had. This unsettling discovery prompts her to open a personal investigation into her family tree, revealing ever more difficult truths about her father.

Through interviews with her father’s patients and children, a shocking, extensive pattern of deceit, malpractice, and sexual abuse emerges, leaving Wendi and her half-siblings to question which of their biological father’s traits they may have inherited. As Wendi probes her own identity, she wonders, “Do you want to say your father was a monster? And what does that say about you?”

“Why would Dr. Fortier do this? He was far from the only one,” says director Hannah Olson. “At least 22 others have been exposed for committing this previously undiscoverable crime, affecting many more patients than we’ll ever know. I was interested in this unraveling – how we try to make sense of ourselves through our families and what happens when we can’t connect the dots.”

Fans of Queen of Sono have joined forces online to get behind a petition for the show’s renewal.

The series was cancelled by Netflix after one season following its highly hyped premiere in 2020. Despite being initially renewed in April 2020, the streaming platform announced that its first African original series wouldn’t be coming back after all.

Logistical reasons were cited as COVID19 restrictions rendered filming on location an insurmountable challenge (The show is set primarily in Cape Town). The lockdown restrictions have affected the production of several new shows, and has also led to the delays of Babes Wodumo and Mampintsha’s highly anticipated ‘Uthando Lodumo’ reality show.

But on Wednesday, the show’s lead actress Pearl Thusi was joined by fans in rallying behind calls for Netflix to renew ‘Queen Sono’.

The fan who started the petition argued the series still has plenty of life in it. ‘Queen Sono deserves a reversible decision on its recent cancellation. Please reconsider your decision, many loyal fans were supporting this SA classic, there was more story for sure’, she wrote on the poll, which has also sparked a trend on Twitter.

The second season was meant to chronicle Queen’s pursuit of the truth as her raging need for revenge takes her on a mission across Africa. All while she deals with her family’s past and her complicated love life.

Pearl Thusi, Vuyo Dabula, Sechaba Morojele, Chi Mhende, Loyiso Madinga, Rob Van Vuuren, Kate Liquorish, Khathu Ramabulana and Enhle Mbali Mlotshwa were all tipped to return for the highly anticipated season 2.

SHOULD ‘QUEEN SONO’ BE RENEWED? 

On one hand, it’s unfortunate that the first-ever African original series on Netflix had to be cancelled.

The commissioning of the series by Netflix certainly bolstered the creation of spaces for fresh African storytelling. I, for one, am looking forward to Netflix ramping up their offering of local content. However slow, they have started banging out some really good African shows.

We can’t downplay the fact that it is Queen Sono that paved the way for other South African productions on the platform, such as Blood & Water, King of Jozi and How To Ruin A Christmas. 

But, hot take; Queen Sono was a little underwhelming. It could have been because of the promotional buzz that preceded it. It could just be one of those series that starts picking things up from season 2, when the writer’s room has all the feedback.

Thus, the show’s renewal would certainly be welcome news because we need African narratives to find the platform. Petition aside, don’t expect riots if it remains on ice. Blood & Water, King of Jozi and How To Ruin A Christmas, were all delights. The takeaway here is that African content is needed. But when it arrives, it must be good.

Browse The Latest Series, Movies, Reality Shows To Stream Online