Projek Dina (Project Dina) is a South African, Afrikaans-language, police procedural television drama series which follows three totally different personalities in one team, a multitude of missing persons cases in Cape Town and personal lives which are barely held together.
In South Africa a child is reported missing every five hours. Approximately 30% of missing children are never found, while 50% of missing adults are never seen again, according to the SAPS Missing Persons Bureau, 2013.
Projek Dina is set in the work and living environments of a rapid response task force, where the pressure is sky-high and the margin for error miniscule.
Now that this task force has been newly-assembled by the Western Cape police, in an attempt to curb the rapidly growing number of missing persons in South Africa, the members of the team are left with a nearly impossible task: finding the missing persons in Cape Town and bringing them home, one by one.
During the course of these attempts, we witness how three detectives - specially selected by Brigadier Patricia Dlomo - work days on sleepless nights, make and receive calls at all hours, and brave Cape Town's most dangerous corners.
Team leader, captain Deon Visagie (Tim Theron), is a strategist and sleuth by nature. He obsesses over the smallest detail, but his capacity for reading people falls miserably short.
He has particular trouble with sergeant Lux Dladla's (Chumani Pan) approach to detective work, which relies strongly on intuition and the ability to build and utilise a large network of contacts.
The task force enlists the help of a non-official informant, the talented and efficient hacker, Charlene "Charlie" Botha (Kay Smith).
However, even Charlie soon realises that these cases place her in more danger than she ever could have expected. And the information she supplies is not always reliable...
Deputy Officer Ronel Oosthuizen (Chanelle de Jager) is the one that keeps the team together. She is an honest, hard-working, family-oriented person, but certainly not one to be trifled with.
She doesn't abide trivialities and often gets stuck in the middle when Deon and Lux butt heads, but knows exactly how to handle them. She is also the one that dubs the task team "Projek Dina".
Other actors in the series include Lee-Ann van Rooi, Jana Kruger, Wilhelm van der Walt, Nadia Valvekens, Pierre van Pletzen, Jane de Wet, Zenobia Kloppers, Crystal-Donna Roberts, Christia Visser, Mila Guy, Neels van Jaarsveld, Paul du Toit, Trix Vivier, Elsabé Daneel, Illse Roos and André Roothman.
Former Hawks inverstigator Marcell van der Watt, as well as Nicky Rheeder and Bianca van Aswegen from Missing Children SA, acted as consultants for the series.
Projek Dina is inspired by true stories and was developed from the combined knowledge of Van der Watt, Rheeder and Van Aswegen.
The series was created and produced as an M-Net Original Production for kykNET by Penguin Films. The supervising producer for kykNET is Wikus du Toit.
The first episode was written by Justine Loots and directed by Liezl Spies. Storyliners on the series include Loots, Henry Cloete, Darryl Fuchs, Gillian Breslin, Johan Davis and Roberta Durrant.
The theme music is by Jacques du Plessis, with original music by Pressure Cooker Studios.