For years, South African producers have wanted to break into the international market, but budget problems have always gotten in the way. Now, though, it looks like they’ve got their best chance so far:
Creator, Star Talk New South African Paranormal Detective Series ROOM 9 – Team TVWriter Press Service
Welcome to the playground of the Devil, where Satanic cults, Muti murders, the Tokoloshe, Demons, Poltergeists, Zombies, Werewolves, Aliens, Vampires, and even a Mermaid, are all on the menu.
They’re all part of an upcoming new 13-part South African television series set in an alternate “Pan-African universe,” where all sorts of inexplicable, paranormal dark threats rule.
Here, a specialized Police Occult Unit led by ambitious young detective Alice Kunene, together with seasoned veteran Harkness, and their high-tech detective team, situated in a cavernous, dingy basement, called Room 9 (other teams disparagingly refer to this team as “Zombie Cops”), hunt down the “perpetrators of evil,” both in the world of the living and of the dead.
Zethu Dlomo, David Butler, Anthony Oseyemi, Angela Ludek, and Elné Pretorius are the stars, and some of the creators behind the new series should be names you recognize (if you live in South Africa or the Pan-African Universe), like Charlie Vundla (he directed last year’s South African crime drama, How To Steal 2 Million), and Darrell Roodt (director of WINNIE).
ROOM 9 premieres on South African TV network SABC1, on Thursday, November 8, at 8:30 pm. Tell your friends in Johannesburg to DVR it and send you a copy. (Um, does that break the law?) Oh, and you can also watch the trailer below:
Having done a TV series in South Africa — ‘AFRICAN SKIES’ — I’d work there for free. A great Country, proud people, wonders every which way you turn. Okay, I’ll even pay you. gs