Coming up on SABC3 on Wednesday, January 25th at 21h00 is a new 24-episode drama series called Shado's.
The show is executively produced by Gray Hofmeyr of Isidingo fame, who's teaming up with former Isidingo head writer Richard Beydon penning-wise. Together they've created Shado's world.
Shado's refers both to the downtown bar all the action is set in as well as to Shado, the bar's co-owner and the lead character - who'll be played by Nambitha Mpumlwana (Tsotsi, Yizo-Yizo).
With and around her at the bar are a variety of other characters whose lives become one when the show starts.
To be zingingly ready and in the moood for everyone who'll be shadowing their way through boozy secrets and their sexy consequences, here's all the latest news about the show followed by a who's who of the characters we'll meet.
From the press release:
SABC3 is currently filming a bold, sexy and uncompromising new television drama series which will hit South African screens at the end of January next year.
It promises to redraw the boundaries of local small-screen drama with a top-flight cast and plotlines tangled in a web of intrigue, betrayal, passion and outright deception, all spiced with a dash of off-the-wall comedy.
Shado's is downtown on a razor's edge, tracing the manipulations, sexual tensions, guilt, betrayal and deceptions of seemingly ordinary people who often conceal some bizarre and extraordinary secrets. It finds itself where Sex And The City meets Cheers, as it flirts with the absurd, the dangerous and the dramatic with the zing of a Mai-Tai cocktail and the dark undertones of a finely-brewed espresso.....
Starring alongside Mary-Anne Barlow are seasoned talents like Bodine (Jennifer Steyn), Moses (Sechaba Morojele), Jim (David Butler), Shado (Nambitha Mpumlwana), and it features a sexy, smouldering Shawn (Craig Urbani), recently back home after wowing London's theatre circuit.
Shado's also sees a fresh crop of young talent with the likes of Michael (Anthony Bishop), Lorn (Chantal Herman), (Tams) Ilanit Shapiro and (Taps) Anele Matoti.
"SABC 3 is proud to present this series to our audience. Our dramas are all tailored to tell the South African story in a manner that audiences relate to and Shado's will be no exception", says Eddie Manzingana (SABC3 acting Head of Programming).
Shado's is produced for SABC 3 by Endemol SA.
The Characters
Shado (Nambitha Mpumlwana)
Shado is co-owner of the Shado's Bar. She is about 30 - black, sexy, intelligent, but she hides a double-edged secret. A past that conceals a damning personal secret - one so dire that she can barely face the memory.
When it comes to men Shado keeps to herself and is almost celibate, until she meets the man that will change all that. It's a relationship that once again exposes her deepest fears and emotions, and forces her to confront her past in order to save her future.
Shawn (Craig Urbani)
Shawn, airline flight attendant, co-owner of the bar "Shado's", is white, mid-thirties, and a 'dude' - sexy, laid back and a bit insecure, he's a little boy at heart. While the universe puzzles him slightly, he approaches life with a healthy sense of humour and irony.
Shawn's great weakness is women and playing the field is his game, in his unique, naive way. Despite his past and his womanising intruding to haunt him, Shawn remains a likeable, charming character: clever, unreliable and amusing, taking life as it comes. He's a wild card.
Moses (Sechaba Morojele)
Moses, black, late thirties or early forties, is a war journalist in the classic 'Bang-Bang Club' mould, at the moment between assignments. He's an award-winning celebrity hot-spot photographer, but conceals from himself and from others the fact that he is burnt out, a victim of too much random and arbitrary violence over too many years.
Although extremely talented he is insecure, and sometimes feels that he has lost it. He has been severely traumatised and has a deep moral dilemma about the fact that he has made money off the misery of nations.
Jackie (Mary-Anne Barlow)
Jackie, white, mid-twenties, works at the bar Shado's. She hides a dark secret - a shocking incident that has coloured her outlook on life and herself. In flirting with customers she finds it difficult to judge where to draw the line between harmless flirtation and dangerous raising of expectations. But this doesn't stop her from falling in love, sometimes inappropriately, and maybe with both males and females.
She is intelligent and a survivor, but is insecure, and very easily manipulated by her sister, Savannah, who makes a dramatic and unexpected appearance at Shado's.
Bodine (Jennifer Steyn)
Bodine, mid- to late thirties, is a warm, empathetic, generous person whose fault is to misjudge how generosity is best demonstrated. She demonstrates it by sleeping with men who need her. They might imagine that she's a distributor of sexual favours, but she knows that what she gives them is more important than sex - a sympathetic ear; a generous bosom; a chance for them to spill their secret insecurities, their inner longings, their most deeply felt desires.
Bodine is intelligent, but more importantly, psychologically astute.
Jim (David Butler)
Jim Moody, middle-aged, and white, a relatively recently widowed man, is the CEO of one of the country's most profitable mining groups, although this is not a fact he boasts about. All male, apparently, Jim is the honorary chairman of a biking club, and he still keeps company with some of those homeboys, but he is, at the same time, a multi-millionaire, a mining magnate of great influence.
The truth is, he's reached a mid-point in his life. He fears that he occupies corporate air so rarefied that he's in danger of losing his humanity. He comes to Shado's simply because people don't know who he is there.
Lorn (Chantal Herman)
Lorn is between 20 and 25, and female. She is street smart, foxy, sexy and dynamite. She has only ever been a waitress, but has a marked psychological insight. She is good at surviving. She is not educated, not clever, but very cunning. She falls into a liaison that leads her inexorably down a path she could never have predicted.
Michael (Anthony Bishop)
Michael is 40-ish, white, unattractive and soft centred. He is totally under the thumb of his wife Rita, who holds the purse strings in their sour marriage. He completely and irrationally falls in love with one of the waitresses. Michael is pathetic, but still valiant and eminently likeable.
His affair with his lady-love gives him the courage to get out from under his wife's thumb. The plan he and his new lady devise for their future life together is both diabolical, and necessary.
Taps (Anele Matoti)
Taps, short for Thapelo, is a mid-twenties black 'model C' guy - cute, good looking and charming. He has almost no connection with his 'roots'. He is an agency guy, thinks he is more intelligent than he is, and comes from a very rich family, living with his parents in the Northern Suburbs. He is unemployed, but on an allowance from his parents.
Taps, likeable as he is, is not in touch with the real world.
Tams (Ilanit Shapiro)
Tams, or Tamsin, is in her mid-twenties, white, female, beautiful and very naïve. She and Taps are completely in love, despite their respective parents' disapproval.
Tams is the victim of a sheltered upbringing, having attended a private school and coming from a very well off family.
She is unemployed but, like Taps, gets an allowance from her rich parents. She and Taps want to get married, but have no money of their own.