Queen Sono
Queen Sono sets a flawed but important example for other African-produced content, writes Margaret Gardiner
Make no mistake, the arrival of Netflix’s first commissioned African series is a big deal. With a depth of pocket and access to millions of subscribers across the globe, the streaming giant’s decision to begin to create content made by Africans for African audiences is a hopeful and hopefully game-changing development for content producers and consumers across the continent and beyond.
Kagiso Lediga and the team at Diprente are the first out of the gate with their sixpart action-packed pan-African political drama starring Pearl Thusi. Nommer 37 director Nosipho Dumisa will take delivery of the torch when her Cape Town-based high school series, Blood & Water, is release on the platform later this year and Netflix has already announced future projects in development with producers from elsewhere on the continent.
So while acknowledging the significance of Queen Sono as an Africanproduced product within a hugely hopeful moment for the continent’s film industry, it’s still necessary to examine what Lediga and his team have produced on its own terms and here there is both much to be excited and proud of and a little to be somewhat critical and perplexed by.
Over six 45-minute episodes Queen Sono introduces us to the titular character, played by Thusi, who must balance her secret life as an undercover agent for a fictional spy agency dedicated to protecting Africa and her own personal demons as the daughter of a slain struggle revolutionary.
The show starts off as something in the style of Alias — a high-action Spyjinx, boxticking genre piece that happens to be set in Africa before it develops into something more interesting as a political drama exploring the complexities of the continent in the post-independence, late capitalist era in which political turmoil and conflicts are the result of the interference and manipulation of greedy, ruthless international corporate interests.
Thanks to controlled direction by Lediga and Thabiso Malope and sharp cinematography by Motheo Moeng the show looks very good and makes a pleasantly recognisable cache out of its locations, which range from Zanzibar to Johannesburg and Nairobi.
Queen is an impish, rule-breaking but talented agent whose charm and skills allow her, in Bond-like tried and tested fashion, to get away with skirting too close to danger for the comfort of her superiors because they know she’ll ultimately get the job done. What they don’t always realise is that the trauma of her mother’s death and the pressure of her legacy are taking an emotional toll on their super agent.
However, while this classic spy thriller dichotomy gives the story a psychological depth that allows it to do more than simply present an African-centred retread of the tropes of the genre, it’s sometimes let down by Thusi’s performance. Although she certainly looks the part and is having a gay old time kicking ass and wearing the costumes and has a sly charm that’s hard not to like, she doesn’t necessarily possess the emotional range needed to convince audiences of what’s at stake for the character as she gets caught in the rollercoaster of emotions that her journey between the past and present throws up.
Similarly, the story, as it progresses over the course of the series, sometimes suffers from a tonal indecisiveness that distracts from complete investment in the multilayered complexities of the politically pertinent and socially relevant themes it wants us to consider behind the gloss of the action and the continental jet-setting that provide much of the delights of its surface attractions.
That said, the many pleasures to be had from watching a pan-African story starring a kick-ass African female lead who works for a high-tech, world-class spy network dedicated to bringing down international bad guys messing around in the continent’s affairs for their own self-interest successfully manage to create a commendable piece of thoughtful and engaging entertainment that bodes well for future African Netflix content.
Queen Sono is an important and welcome first step to showing that there are ways in which locally produced content can both compete with international shows on a production and genre level while also injecting enough of a specifically African social awareness and feeling into such material.
That may seem a small step for international film audiences but it’s a giant leap for the continent’s producers and content makers.
It develops into something more interesting as a political drama ... in the post-independence, late capitalist era
A commendable piece of thoughtful and engaging entertainment that bodes well for future African Netflix content