by Thinus Ferreira
8 TVs 
Nêrens, Noord-Kaap, the tragic and moody new 13-episode Afrikaans drama series on kykNET (DStv 144) with English subtitles, comfortably seeks out and wallows in vast, silent, uncomfortably empty spaces as its damaged characters desperately search for ways to fill up their painful lives (alcohol!, romance!, travelling! fatherhood!).
Writer and director Nico Scheepers reveals himself to be South Africa's Baz Luhrmann.
As clearly a formalist auteur, Nico Scheepers's TV version of his Nêrens, Noord-Kaap play details the journeys of 3 estranged and troubled brothers, along with their paternalistic father, on, and away from the family farm in the barren vistas world of the Northern Cape.
In terms of TV and film criticism and analysis, a lot can be written and dissected about Nêrens, Noord-Kaap ("nowhere, Northern Cape") - suffice to say that the writer and director, like Baz Luhrmann (and employing a lot of his techniques) places the viewer central to the story, demands that the viewer goes on a journey, that the viewer engages with the story and that the watcher puts in the work to think about what you're seeing.
The visuals, colouring, filters, editing, narrative use of characters, symbols and themes of Nêrens, Noord-Kaap all tell a full-bodied story of emptiness and how people living with literally and figurative empty lives try to fill their broken lives in a search for "healing" and meaning.
Suffering into adulthood, years after the loss of their Dutch mother, brother Frans (Geon Nel) - beset by nightmares and visions and just as injured as one of his lambs and in need of tender love and care - lives a life empty of love. Tragically he doesn't believe that he deserves any.
Alcoholic brother and father Ronnie (Albert Pretorius) after a divorce tries to drink himself to the brim to numb the pain, tragically stealing from his pre-teen son exactly what was taken away from him in his formative years: a parent.
Hyper-sensitive Andries (De Klerk Oelofse) desperately wants to escape the physical place of pain where he grew up, turning into a worldly, repos ailleurs type traveller-dreamer who tragically believes that true rest is forever found elsewhere.
Like Baz, Nico Scheepers' TV-version of Nêrens, Noord-Kaap, produced by Nagvlug Films and with lingering cinematography by Chris Lotz, is a stylised cinematic experience that wants to make you feel something.
Beyond the mere story, Nêrens, Noord-Kaap tries to evoke emotional responses from the viewer with the catharsis that comes from learning through what you're feeling.
With a poetic, cinematic and formalist approach, Nêrens, Noord-Kaap deftly immerses the viewer in the dream-like, open/empty world of the Adendorff farmer brothers looking to be filled up; to somehow, hopefully, be made whole (again).
Some of the acting from certain members of the supporting cast are uneven and questionable, however the strong symbolism and motifs beautifully worked into the mise-en-scène of Nêrens, Noord-Kaap throughout the episodes, completely overshadow any of these negligible acting deficiencies.
It's beautiful - and beautifully heartbreaking - as brother Frans, for instance, drives away from the love of his life in his bakkie on a dirt road in the closing moments of the third episode, as the camera lingers on how the dust clouds literally erase the woman from existence. She literally and symbolically disappears and is wiped from the audiences' gaze.
Nêrens, Noord-Kaap isn't a feel-good TV drama. It's a feel drama - and often uncomfortable at that.
With a distinctive visual style and with a story told through characters as well as through images, the TV version of Nêrens, Noord-Kaap is a richly textured, well-executed audio-visual drama on kykNET - ripe for post-graduate dissertation of just how far the traditional Afrikaans "farm novel" story has progressed within a new medium as a cinematic experience.
Nêrens, Noord-Kaap is on Tuesdays on kykNET (DStv 144) at 20:00, starting 31 August 2021.
This review is based on the first 3 episodes.
