With “Queen Sono,” Netflix enters new territory
Unlike most spy thrillers in which statuesque, expensively dressed women show an unexpected talent for kicking the bejeezus out of armed men, the South African series “Queen Sono” also devotes a lot of time to historical and geopolitical debate, or at least sloganeering. An armed band that might be terrorists or might be freedom fighters declares its intent to liberate Africa from “the clutches of colonization.” A hapless dogooder calls out the primary villain for being a neocolonialist, and is quickly abducted with extreme prejudice.
The real colonizer, of course, is the one behind the screen: Netflix, where the six episodes of this sprawling, earnest, likable show debut Friday. “Queen Sono” is Netflix’s first script-to-screen commission from Africa, another small step in the streaming giant’s takeover of international television and a significant leap in the visibility of Africanmade stories in America and elsewhere. That “Queen Sono” is unremarkable as an action and crime drama doesn’t cancel the excitement of seeing something new (if it’s indeed new to you).
As with other test cases for narrative globalization, like the South Korean “Kingdom” or the Scandinavian “Ragnarok,” you can sense the bending of local traditions toward Netflix norms: the six-episode season; the emphasis on action and mystery; the clockwork interjections of a Westernized, universally intelligible wry humor. But “Queen Sono,” created by South African writer and performer Kagiso Lediga, doesn’t compromise when it comes to rooting its story close to home.
The title character, played by Pearl Thusi is an undercover agent for a South African intelligence unit, a small and beleaguered group tasked, in somewhat cartoonish fashion, with protecting the country and the continent from every kind of threat. (Its size — five core members — makes you wonder whether the budget for “Queen Sono” wasn’t as generous as it was for other Netflix series.)
Queen is an ace at handto-hand combat, but she, and the show, are saddled with an omnipresent backstory about her mother, an activist killed in mysterious circumstances when Queen was a child. Her anger and guilt over her mother’s death tie into the show’s overall mood, a simmering anguish in which the ecstatic promise of South Africa’s liberation under Nelson Mandela has ebbed into stasis and corruption, with former heroes now busily pocketing bribes. The show’s embodiment of that outlook, and the motor of the season’s plot, is an alliance between a squad of blacknationalist revolutionaries and a Russian security outfit called Superior Solutions. (The initials SS aren’t remarked on, but are hard to miss.)
That framework is certainly a serious part of Lediga’s conception of the show, and it serves a similar purpose, in terms of setting a mood, as do the more anonymous conspiracies and injustices of American or French noir. But spelling it out makes “Queen Sono” sound a lot more serious than it is. Between the speeches about colonial legacies and about historical atonement, there are plenty of throw-downs and chases and shootouts.
The pleasures of “Queen Sono” come in the generally engaging performances, including warm and sharply funny work from Abigail Kubeka as Queen’s acerbic grandmother and Enhle Mlotshwa as the patient girlfriend of a man hung up on Queen.