Hlubi Mboya is bursting back on television tonight in the new local drama series, The Docket, on SABC3 at 21:30 in which the actress known for her iconic role as Nandipha in Isidingo, leads an elite, fictional crime-fighting unit called The Ravens as the only woman in a high-stakes, high-adrenalin team.
The
13-episode series from Clive Morris Productions, created by the veteran
uber-producer Helen Smit, revolves around Colonel Ntsiki Motshe (Hlubi Mboya),
leading a fictional South African high-profile crime fighting unit, trying to
solve cases CSI-style that are loosely inspired by real-life, high-profile
South African crime stories.
While
the squad members have been chosen for their outstanding investigation skills,
they’re also battling the glare of the media eye, with Motshe who has to try
and deflect, answer and come up with quotes while everything happening
behind-the-scenes is often very different from what is being presented to the
media.
Tonight’s
first episode is loosely inspired by the shock-hijacking and murder of the
reggae star Lucky Dube in 2007 that made international headlines, with Sean
Robert Daniels as head writer of the series.
The series and first episode
starts a year after the formation of The Ravens, and they’re investigating the
case of famous musician Kgosi who is murdered.
Besides
the stress of the work, the harrowing cases and crime-solving that veer into
unexpected territory and resulting in unbelievable plot twists, gender dynamics
also come to the front since Hlubi Mboya’s character is the only woman in a
male-dominated team – where she is also the boss.
Part
of the team are Colonel Marlon van Wyk (Duncan Johnson), Brigadier Funani Twala
(Seputla Sebogodi), detective Terry Jahib (Ashish Gangapersad) and detective
Neil Hall (Brendon Engelbrecht).
Can The Ravens catch the perpetrators of crime
without causing PR nightmares? Can South Africans from literally all walks of
life, flung together under dangerous circumstances, work together to solve
sensitive crime cases?
Cases in The Docket range from a farm attach to campus rape, a possible cannibal chef, a named
business man run over in the street, an “alien abduction”, an old man abducted
from a nursing home, fossil theft, a judge murdered in a hotel room and bank
robberies.
