by Thinus Ferreira
In Queen Modjadi's first episode, a flawed king suspects his sons of plotting to kill him (he's right!), murders all 10 of them, and then has sex with his daughter - hoping for her to get pregnant with a daughter to fulfil a prophecy to appease the ancestors and raingods.
While first episodes of new TV series are usually scene-setting, forced to use the time to do basic character introductions and the setting setting for the audience before the plot starts, Rhythm World Productions on Sunday night disposed of the normal pleasantries and instantly went on a very bloody killing spree in Queen Modjadji.
Multiple just-established characters were brutally killed off during the first episode on Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) on Sunday night, with several others in grave jeopardy, and some forced to flee from a crazy king.
While blood flowed, a daughter bared a boy instead of a daughter after having forced sex with her father the king, while the remaining tribe members wondered who else would live and who would die as they tried to stay alive in their drought-ravaged village.
For MultiChoice, M-Net's Mzansi Magic channel which is following up Shaka iLembe with Queen Modjadji, and for Rhythm World Productions, the scene-setting and jarring story is a calculated risk but one that they deem necessary to be authentic to the origin legend of the rain queen.
Although gruesome initially, MultiChoice and the producers took great pains not to be exploitative, to offend, or to drive away Sunday night DStv subscribers with lurid sex scenes and explicit murder and violence.
"We're in 2024. It's important for us to tell the Queen Modjadji story, as hard as it is, very, very respectfully," Nomsa Philiso, MultiChoice CEO for general entertainment, told me in a sit-down interview.
"You'll see the scenes around the conception hut - the way that it is done - it's almost sacrosanct. They are preparing her. They are doing it in a way that is very respectful. You will not see any sex scenes, for instance. We do understand that certain things are spoken of. So how do you still tell the story but respectfully?"
"Of course we thought the incest storyline is going to be 'wow, wow, wow' with viewers but we cannot walk away from it because that is the genesis of Queen Modjadji. It's the story," she said.
"Queen Modjadji is the right thing to do for MultiChoice; the right TV project. If we say we are truly going to tell our own stories, we should not just be telling the easy ones."
Gersh Kgamedi, Queen Modjadji's creative producer, told me the biggest challenge right off the bat for MultiChoice and Rhythm World Productions "was how do you present the taboo of a father sleeping with a daughter, and how do we treat and approach that respectfully."
"For us that was the biggest, biggest challenge of the entire story. One misstep could have changed the story entirely."
The king's killing of his sons "is based on real events," Gersh Kgamedi explains.
"What we've done is mixed true events with partly fiction. The killing of the sons is important because that is the culmination of ultimately changing the kingdom from a kingdom to a queendom, so the sons had to be get rid of as well."
