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Love true crime? Showmax is bringing the award-winning and record-breaking shows based on South Africa hen here’s the lineup of shows you’ll want to stream on Showmax.
Tracking Thabo Bester is the true crime documentary South Africa has been asking for ever since GroundUp first broke the news that the convicted murderer and rapist did not burn to death in Cell 35 after all and was instead shopping in Woolworths in Sandton City.
Thabo Bester was the most searched person in South Africa on Google in 2023, with his co-accused, Dr Nandipha Magudumana, just behind in fourth place, as the whole country obsessed over the stormy tale of love, murder, deception and corruption.
The documentary, which racked up the most first-day views of any documentary on Showmax ever, was also the most-watched title across all genres over launch weekend and received rave reviews, with IOL’s Oluthando Keteyi calling it “jawdropping” and Rapport’s Leon van Nierop describing it as “angry, bizarre, brilliant.”
It’s produced by the team behind previous hits including the SAFTA-winning Devilsdorp, the Sanlam Group Financial Journalist of the Year-winning Steinheist, and the previous holder of Showmax’s true-crime record Rosemary’s Hitlist.
The final two episodes are streaming from Friday, 22 March.
“We tend to discuss Thabo Bester like it’s an isolated case but it’s clearly not,” says director Nikki Comninos. “Bester has been depicted as some kind of anomaly for being able to run a business while incarcerated, but so did Dawie de Villiers – also a convicted rapist who lured his victims online – at a completely different prison. This raises questions about what is happening with the South African prison system.”
The dark story of Dawie de Villiers, once described as “the Kempton Park Hugh Hefner” is covered in Convict Conman, also directed by Comninos. The documentary also looks at a shadowy businessman known as Michael O’Connor. He runs a publishing empire - but no one has ever seen his face. O’Connor claims de Villiers is a “good friend” but what else do they have in common?
Boetie Boer: Inside the Mind of a Monster
The most disturbing Showmax Original true-crime series to date, Boetie Boer: Inside The Mind of a Monster takes us back in time to 1990: as the African National Congress is unbanned and Nelson Mandela is released after 27 years in prison, Stewart ‘Boetie Boer’ Wilken starts his killing spree in Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha. As journalist Brett Adkins says in the trailer, “When he was arrested, it sounded like something out of a movie. Suddenly, we had a serial killer.”
Rosemary’s Hitlist is a Showmax Original four-part true-crime documentary series about cop-turned-serial-killer Nomia Rosemary Ndlovu
On 12 October 2015, Ndlovu’s live-in lover, Yingwani Maurice Mabasa, the father of her only living child at the time, went missing. Three days later, his body was found in Olifantsfontein – with 76 stab wounds. Mabasa had 16 policies in his name, totalling over R400 000 – and Ndlovu was the beneficiary of all of them. And he wasn’t the only victim …
Showmax content is on a roll. Last year, Spinners became the first African series at Canneseries, and now, Catch Me A Killer is the first series entirely shot in South Africa in competition at Series Mania. Billed as “Europe’s biggest TV festival” by Variety, Series Mania runs from 19-21 March in Lille, France.
In addition, South African Warren Gray recently won Best Production Design at the British Film Designers’ Guild for his work recreating 90s South Africa. For context, other winners there included Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Saltburn and Silo.
Charlotte Hope, who played Myranda in Game of Thrones and headlined Starz’s The Spanish Princess as Catherine of Aragon, stars in Catch Me a Killer as Micki Pistorius, South Africa’s first-ever serial-killer profiler. Catch Me A Killer traces Pistorius’ quest, as a newly qualified forensic psychologist, to track down South Africa’s most feared killers. Each episode looks at another of her cases, from the Station Strangler to Stewart “Boetie Boer” Wilken.
In his four-star review in Rapport, Leon van Nierop wrote, "Showmax hits the jackpot again with a dark, creepy but highly realistic adaptation of Micki Pistorius's Catch Me a Killer... It's one of the best true crime series ever."
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This post and content is sponsored, written and produced by Showmax.
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