SABC1 adds new 13-episode Sunday night Agent football drama series with Kay Sibiya and Sisanda Henna.

by Thinus Ferreira

SABC1 is adding a new local drama series, Agent, to Sunday nights from 8 March revolving around an egotistical football star and his unpredictable and volatile agent, played by Sisanda Henna and Kay Sibiya.

The 13-episode hourlong series that starts on Sunday 8 March at 21:30 on SABC was produced as a co-production between Cinebar Studios and Canal+ International and was created and written by Athos Kyriakides who also does duty director duty alongside Sean Els and Jon Rabaud.

Agent, executive produced by Danie Halgryn and Andrea Habermeyer, explores some of the wheeling and dealing that goes on behind-the-scenes in the modern-day football industrial complex.

Within this world filled with sociopathic rival agents, megalomaniac club owners, scheming professional football players and their gold-digging football wags, compromised club managers, and duplicitous witch-doctors, everyone shamelessly hustle and negotiate inside the corridors of power of the beautiful game.

Sisanda Henna portrays Lesego "Ace" Moleko, one of the biggest strikers in South Africa with an ego that knows no bounds. Lurching from one scandal to the next, he wears the number 9 shirt while his personalised number plate reads "God".

Slindile "Blaze" Magoba (Kay Sibiya) is a former professional football player whose career ended prematurely due to an injury but reinvented himself as a fierce and mercurial soccer agent who cares about his clients. He's however wrestling with a "fatal secret" that he buried 6 years ago.

Ace is Blaze's number one client but also his biggest headache.

The rest of the Agent cast includes Pamela Nomvete (Godi Zulu), Zweli Dube (Phumlani Mbebe), Tarryn Wyngaard (Nathalie Isaacs), Makgotso M (Delilah Skosana), Paballo Moganedi (Kim Moyo) and Owen Sejake in the role of Walter Mbebe.

Other cast members include Manie Malone (Nina Sankara), Thabo Malema (Vuyo Moyo), Robert Mpisi (Monte Skosana), Virgile Bramly (Jean-Pierre Yasbeck), Yannick Konan (Herve Toure), Michaella Russell (Mila Dior), Vinaya Sungkur (Jade Singh) Sarah Kozlowski (Zoe Zante) and Gabriella Cirillo (Jackie East).

Anthony Oseyemi plays the character of Christopher Kilembe, a powerful sports lawyer who is ruthless and relentless.

Set in Johannesburg and written by Athos Kyriakides, Nonzi Bogatsu, Elan Gamaker and Salah Sabiti, Agent includes a vintage 70's funk soundtrack mixed with psychedelic alternative ballads and contemporary African and South African hip hop.

Veteran actress Pamela Nomvete joins Mzansi Magic's prison drama, Lockdown, from the second season starting 9 October.

Pamela Nomvete has joined the local South African prison drama series, Lockdown with the second season that will start on Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) on Monday 9 October.

The veteran actress will make her appearance as new Governor Deborah Banda - a character who holds a dark secret.

The first season of Lockdown wrapped with a shocking finale that saw Warden Sharon Zulu hauled off to jail and Governor Beauty demoted from her position.

The new second season picks up in the aftermath with Lockdown that will dig deeper into the characters that make up Thabazimbi Women’s Correctional Service; from the tough-as-nails, Tyson (Lorcia Cooper) to celebrity jailbird Monde (Zola Nombona) and Mazet (Dawn Thandeka King).

The inmakes will continue to find their feet and fight for survival in the midst of the shake-up that is caused by new arrivals on the scene. 

Fresh from another prison enters the most dangerous inmate in South Africa, Maki Magwaza (Linda Sebezo). Maki seeks revenge on the woman who took her son away from her and everyone will soon get to see that spilling blood is something that comes naturally to Maki.

Thabo Rametsi plays Simon Banda, Deborah’s clueless son.

Meanwhile, returning to Thabazimbi after her brief stint as a free woman is Mazet, who is relishing her role as the new boss while Tyson deals with loss and Monde is occupying herself with protecting her diamonds at all costs.

"The first season of Lockdown explored the world of women behind bars and the challenges they face as they strived to see another day," says Reneilwe Sema, the M-Net director of local entertainment channels.

"The second season will show prison in its layer upon layer of secrets, hopes and pain all shared by those confined behind bars."

Generations' real legacy: Actors Sello Maake ka Ncube, Pamela Nomvete refuse to return to SABC1 and Mfundi Vundla's new Generations.

Stalwart actors Sello Maake ka Ncube who played Archie and Pamela Nomvete who played evil Ntsiki both say they refuse to return to SABC1 and producer Mfundi Vundla's reset Generations ever again and that they won't be "sellouts" like Connie Ferguson and Rapulana Seiphemo.

Just like when he fired the principal cast of Generations and Mfundi Vundla held a press conference, followed by the cast, with both sides saying completely opposite things, now again someone is blatantly lying - with totally opposite stories.

According to Sello Maake ka Ncube, currently appearing in e.tv's Scandal! after years in Generations as Archie Moroka and now one of the higest paid actors on South African television, he rebuffed attempts by Mfundi Vundla to lure him back to the show.

Yet today in a press conference about the new Generations starting tonight on SABC1 and relaunched as Generations The Legacy, Mfundi Vundla said it was Sello Maake ka Ncube who approached him, and offered to return to the soap, and that it was Mfundi Vundla who rejected Sello Maake ka Ncube's  offer because the character of Archie Moroka was killed off and Generations is "not a fantastical show, we can't bring people back from the dead".

Yet Sello Maake ka Ncube says he doesn't want to be on Generations out of solidarity with the TV industry and established actors who are siding on the part of the fired actors and who are refusing to be on the show.

Pamela Nomvete who was on the soap for 6 years is as vocal according to reports, saying "I wouldn't go back to Generations" and that South African actors "are still exploited to this day. There is a lot of suffering in our showbiz industry".

Pamela Nomvete also sides with the actors who were fired by MMSV Productions and the SABC for wanting better 3 year contracts and better pay rates from Generations similar to the other SABC soaps and those on e.tv.

Pamela Nomvete says "actors are miserable and I hope this is going to be a turning point in our TV industry".