What do you think you’d do if you were pushed to your limits? Do you think you have the capacity to kill? A new South African thriller asks that question, making a seemingly meek cleaning person into someone who kills multiple people in a short stretch of time.
UNSEEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “SATURDAY.” A group of women are sent in for a lineup.
The Gist: Zenzi Mwale (Gail Mabalane) is pulled out of that lineup, and the detective questioning her (Waldemar Schultz) says “You’ve had quite a week,” with three bodies she’s connected to being found all over the city. “Who are you?” he asks. “I am just a cleaner,” she responds.
“MONDAY. Five Days Earlier.” Zenzi is getting ready to welcome her husband Max (Vuyo Dabula) home from prison; he served a two year stretch for a murder, getting out early after he flipped on who he took the fall for. Her landlord Enrico (Abdurgaman Adams) offers her friendly advice on having Max back in her life, and then reminds her she’s behind on the rent. At the house of one of her wealthy clients, the homeowner tells Zenzi that she should let toxic men like Max back in her life. Zenzi reassures her that Max has changed.
She goes to the prison and waits for hours, only to be informed that Max had been released earlier that morning. She tries to call him but gets nowhere. The police won’t help, and when she goes to one of Max’s haunts, she’s harassed and called “Max’s piece of ass.” Enrico saves her from that mess but he drunkenly tries to break into her bungalow until his wife calls him off. She does get calls from Max’s phone, but all she hears is breathing on the other end.
Zenzi then goes to the meatpacking plant owned by Raymond (Brendon Daniels), a former associate of Max’s. It’s not her usual day to clean there, but she needs the work; as she cleans Max’s office, she sees him putting away money and a gun from a drug deal; Raymond basically swears her to secrecy, but doesn’t notice her watching him enter the code to the safe. He warns Zenzi that his former business partner, Jackson Thom (Sherman Pharo), will be looking for Max.
Despite the warnings, Zenzi gets the address where Jackson’s autobody shop is. When Jackson figures out who Zenzi is and that she’s looking for Max, he figures if he can’t get the money Max owes him, he can hold Zenzi as collateral. Zenzi takes the gun she grabbed from Raymond’s open safe and shoots. She’s shocked when Jackson is mortally wounded.
She decides to keep the gun and bring it back to Raymond’s plant so she can plant it back in the safe. But word of Jackson’s death has already reached the police and they’re about to raid the meatpacking plant. She goes to another cleaning job, which is where Detective Lyners (Ilse Kirk) questions her. But Zenzie certainly isn’t done, especially now that Raymond knows that she’s the one that killed Jackson.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Unseen is based on the Turkish series Fatma, and the first episode pretty much copies Fatma‘s first episode beat for beat.
Our Take: We didn’t have much recall about Fatma, which came out two years ago. But when we re-read our review of that show, we realized that we felt the same way about that show that we felt about Unseen: There’s a good story here, about a seemingly powerless woman who turns to violence as she looks for her husband, but it’s a story we hope can build to something compelling from a first episode that plods along a bit.
Some of the storytelling in the first episode is convenient, like Raymond inadvertently letting Zenzi see the code to his safe, then leaving it open after he left the room. But the fear and concern Zenzi shows as she searches out Max is palpable. We do believe that she’s killing out of both fear (her first killing) and rage (her second). We’ll see how that balance tips as the series goes on.
That rage comes from the fact that her and Max’s son Esulu (Omhle Tshabalala) was killed at some point during Max’s prison term. The minion Raymond sends to hire Zenzi for a job says that Max’s activity is what her son killed, and we see pieces of this in flashbacks. Just how will Zenzie deal with that rage, given that she’s normally a victim instead of the perpetrator?
There’s nothing particularly subtle about Unseen, even the scenes where one of her clients, a true crime writer named Lufuno (Mothusi Magano), decides to write a book based on her and call it Unseen. But just because it’s not subtle doesn’t mean it won’t be entertaining to see Zenzi more than hold her own with the crime lords Cape Town.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After shoving Raymond’s minion in front of an oncoming train, Zenzie is seen on CCTV footage picking up Raymond’s gun and walking off.
Sleeper Star: Just like in Fatma, the character of the true crime writer seems superfluous in the first episode, but we’re pretty sure he’ll factor in later on. So we’ll give this to Mothusi Magano, who plays Lufuno, who says you can learn a lot about humanity from watching daytime talk shows.
Most Pilot-y Line: Zenzi watches a talk show where the case of a missing man is discussed; his wife and daughter are interviewed. “The daughter killed him,” Zenzi says, just going on her gut feelings.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We have the same issues with Unseen that we had with Fatma, which is basically that the first episode has some plot holes. But like the original series, we’re hoping that Unseen builds as Zenzi gets deeper into Cape Town’s underground.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.