At the start of the new Netflix South Africa series Tuiskoms, a woman stands on a beach, looking over a body of water. An Afrikaans voiceover (which sounds a bit stiff translated into English) poses a few questions. “What happened to her? Has love abandoned her? Has life tossed her wildly in all directions?”
If this seems like the start of a serious investigation into the life of this woman, it really isn’t. Something shitty undercuts the scene’s seriousness. Literally. An unseen bird deposits its waste on her face. It’s a telling gimmick. The series creators, Louis Pretorius and Albert Snyman, seem to be saying that what follows will mix silliness with seriousness. And so it proves.
In a less obvious way, the scene also gives the game away: Tuiskoms (Homecoming in English) isn’t trying to lure you to finish its entire seven episodes by being original. It knows that if you are familiar enough with Hollywood’s broad comedies, you have seen several versions of this opening gambit before.
Tuiskoms is hoping you don’t mind, it is hoping that by changing the locale and language of this story from some town in the US or England to some town in South Africa, its audience will embrace what is on offer. It helps that South Africa has both the scenery and the technical chops to make the transition as seamless as possible. The pilot’s cinematographer, Sunel Hassbroek, does remarkably well in that regard.
This means that Tuiskoms is one of the many Netflix series created to lure you in with familiarity. And that’s not restricted to the pilot’s opening scene. The series’ very nature is just as familiar. Just take a look at the broad synopsis: A down-on-her-luck character moves back home to start life anew. The lead character in this one, just happens to be speaking Afrikaans.
The Tuiskoms pilot tells an unoriginal story—but is saved by the capability of its cast and the technical competence of its crew. Efiko Score: 6/10
We first meet Fleur (Amalia Uys) on the beach. But a voiceover informs us that to understand her situation is to go back in time, to the recent past, which had her running a restaurant. In the flashback that ensues, and which takes almost the whole of the pilot’s 45 minutes, a customer at her restaurant says he has seen a pubic hair in his meal. Instead of offering an apology and seeking some kind of restitution, Fleur argues with the customer. She places a finger on the meal and licks the finger.
Videos of the incident appear online and go viral; the customer also takes his complaint to the internet. Not long after, she loses the restaurant and somehow also loses her home. She then has to take her daughter, Kelly (Jane de Wet), back to her parents’ home in the well-named Wilderness, which, by the way, is the name of an actual town in South Africa.
Of course, home isn’t exactly paradise. Fleur’s mother, Abigail (the late Michelle Botes), and father, Jonathan (Dawid Minnaar), have their issues. Kelly soon enough has an episode in school. And two men, who may or may not be interested in the new mother in town, show up. Quite clearly, there are multiple threads to unravel over the series’ subsequent six episodes.
Botes handles the pilot’s beefiest role. She plays the fire-breathing Abigail with conspicuous relish. She has never quite warmed to her daughter and her exchange with Jonathan after an unsavoury discovery is one of the pilot’s emotional moments. But where her lack of warmth with Fleur leads is almost certainly an easy guess for any avid watcher of low-stakes comedy. It is a fitting tribute to Botes that her last role shows her in fine form.
The pilot itself has one twist at the end, which again demonstrates South Africa’s technical savviness in these matters. It may not be enough to compel the sophisticated viewer to stick with the show over seven episodes, but it should be enough for the average Afrikaans viewer who has wanted to see what those Hallmark movies might look like filmed in her language and showing on Netflix as an Original.
