by Thinus Ferreira
The teaser trailer for the angst-filled, 8-episode South African teen drama series Blood & Water coming to Netflix gives the terribly bad first impression that it's yet another shallow-looking, rip-off of the Spanish series ELITE - making use of the same-lame production design values of Netflix's The Kissing Booth teen romcom movie that was also filmed in Cape Town.
In my opinion local teen dramas like The Girl from St Agnes and Blood & Water don't need to be high art. It's mostly entertainment fluff.
Yet, when they're so extremely derivative in nature that they do little to nothing to grow, expand and to improve South Africa's TV industry or standing of the local industry in the world, it's well ... bad.
The trope-filled and disappointing Queen Sono came and went on Netflix and accomplished little besides being a footnote as "the first South African Netflix Original".
It failed to move the needle forward in terms of showing what (more) South Africa is capable of, but on another platform in the way that The Crown does for the United Kingdom, Osmosis did for France, 3% did for Brazil or India's incredibly impressive first Netflix original Sacred Games.
Meanwhile the high school set drama series Grassroots on 1Magic (DStv 103) - that yes, also had a swimming pool feature prominently - has been great with a fantastic first season, a suspense-filled, cliffhanger ending, and completely embodies what a Netflix or Showmax series should be.
The story and characters go beyond what has been on television up to now. Grassroots, produced by Clive Morris Productions, expands the teen drama series within the South African context with new themes, topics, plot and characters.
Spain's ELITE did the same and, through Netflix, advanced that country's industry and what the world sees Spain as being capable of producing in terms of television.
But back to Netflix's stale-on-arrival Blood & Water that from the outset even in terms of how the trailer has been cut, looks extremely unoriginal. The main character needs help to find out whether the star of the school's swimming team is really her long-lost sister who was abducted at birth.
It all comes across as very Days of Our UCT Lives - Gossip Girl on Upper Campus edition especially after Quinton van der Burgh did the scripted "reality" series The Shores which was followed up by a second season renamed Clifton Shores.
So let's analyze:
Where have you've heard - or seen - any of these tired TV tropes before?
The outsider teenager - mostly a bookish, studious girl - gets dropped into the world of the clique-ey, rich elite kids who initially don't want anything to do with him/her.
There's the private school that has a pool - the setting of a mystery.
The private kids are beautiful from the outside but ugly from the inside.
The private kids all hide deep, dark secrets.
The private kids do parties with alcohol at mansions or wealthy homes, while the poor kids who are outsiders, somehow get access or attend at the mansion where then bad things happen, including sex that is actually rape.
How about the University of Cape Town as a backdrop for a fancy-schmancy elite school; or Camps Bay as "the beach" where the rich hang out.
Then there is always the "mystery" - someone is either dead or missing, or has a secret family link with someone else in the story. Someone who is not part of of the rich, privileged ones, is on a quest to search and solve the secret(s).
Of course there are teenagers who are smoking - some adults too ... because we have to somehow prove or emphasize that Netflix and Showmax ain't SABC1 Simunye y'all.
And don't forget preppy school blazers, kids wearing headphones, teachers with secrets, outsiders becoming insiders but "losing themselves", snobbish kids forced to eventually see the error of their ways (usually through public shaming), and the silly "bestie" who is in on the main character's secret and the one who comes up with some plan.
Surprise! Someone is usually revealed to be bisexual.
Cue Blood & Water from Gambit Films - filmed in Cape Town and making use of Camps Bay, Cape Town mansions and the University of Cape Town (UCT) that in this one is subbing as Parkhurst College.
Blood & Water, visually and story wise apparently leans heavily in terms of story, characters and production design elements on where Netflix's ELITE, Showmax's The Girl from St Agnes, and even Netflix's teen romcom The Kissing Booth have all gone before.
Hopefully, hopefully Blood & Water isn't yet another yawn-inducing Gossip Girl retread rip-off of the excellent ELITE or the copy-and-paste lookalike The Girl from St Agnes that was already hugely problematic for its similarities to ELITE.
Add into the mix the seen-before production design elements from The Kissing Booth that now appear in Blood & Water and it leaves very little that inspires confidence that the Gambit Films show is going to be very original. Already we've seen:
The outsider will once again be depicted on the steps and literally being pushed around:
Blood & Water
ELITE:
The Kissing Booth:
Pools of trouble - the pool is yet again the scene of a central mystery:
Blood & Water:
ELITE:
Camps Bay is where the kiddies hang out:
Blood & Water:
The Kissing Booth:
Party mansion:
Blood & Water:
The Kissing Booth:
Hot jocks always wear headphones, in school, like so:
Blood & Water:
ELITE:
The preppy rich blonde girl on the left from ELITE has money but a lot of personal problems. The same will very likely be the case for the preppy rich blonde girl, with a really very bad wig on, on the right from Blood & Water:
Speaking of which, the girl with the very bad wig on is Greteli Fincham who plays Greece van Rensburg. She's will be in The Kissing Booth 2 as well. And does the publicity photo pose not remind you of ... oh yes:
At least Shamilla Miller isn't scared of getting typecast. After she was Jenna Galloway from The Girl from St. Agnes on MultiChoice's Showmax she puts on a new red school blazer to now be Riley Morgan in Blood & Water, again playing a private high school bestie:
It's all so much the same, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you had seen Blood & Water like two years ago already and just skip over it all.
ALSO READ: SPOILER ALERT. Here are some of the similarities between The Girl from St. Agnes on Showmax, and ELITE on Netflix.
