As we wrap up the season finale of Blood Psalms, Showmax’s first big fantasy drama epic, this ambitious series had one goal: to show that South Africa could re-imagine and create a fantasy series with a distinctively African identity. The show being set in ancient Egypt (Kemet) and the use of South African languages as the primary medium were undoubtedly wise moves, but was it successful in introducing a new era of epic series in South African film? Unfortunately not.
Going into this series, I was already expecting the CGI to be subpar, but even with the grace extended, it lacked a strong and coherent storyline. The first episode was undoubtedly the strongest because it gave a lot of setups and context and established the main tribes and groups that played important roles in this world. What became glaringly obvious by the second episode was that everything in this world was extremely vain, lacking any depth to create an invested audience.
For example, having this story told in South African languages was one of the show’s best creative decisions. Re-imagining our history (even in a fictitious story) and placing us in central roles was genius, but its execution was lacklustre. The decision to make all the tribes speak the same blend of languages was a mistake, especially as these tribes weren’t in good relation with one another, and only the Chini tribe were truly unique in how they dressed and their mannerisms. Because of the big ensemble cast, it got confusing because everyone blended together.
World Building
After ten episodes, I didn’t know how this world operated. Here, Atlanteans were priestesses of Heka, and dragons appeared from nowhere, but the word “witch” was still a slur and looked down upon by the same people who attended rituals of the same group of people. The last scene had Zazi (the main character of the scene) asking Anubis who he was and who they were, although he was painted on her palatial home. This was during the time of gods; being unclear on who their own deities are is poor writing.
Characters
The characters were not fleshed out. All the characters in this series just did things to progress through the convoluted storyline; I have no idea if I liked any of them. In the small moments where they showed their personalities, they didn’t seem like exceptional characters you’d want to root for. Zazi put her servants in danger by sneaking out to see her secret lover, who would eventually break up with her to save himself, and then proceeded to have a rendezvous with a woman from his past only moments later. The entire personas of the characters were based on what the scene required them to do at any point, and then the storyline got completely abandoned once it had given us a visual or another plot point.

There were some beautiful aspects to this story though. The lighting was phenomenal, and the location stunning, albeit not accurate to where the show was meant to take place, but it’s a fictional show. The set design and wardrobe, at times, were absolutely gorgeous. It borrowed a little too much from the SADC region for my taste, but that was a small factor in the grand scheme of things.
My biggest issue is that this story played out like a soapie. It was neither written episodically nor did it have the intention to resolve the conflict or build the world. Because of this, the pacing was off, resulting in nine episodes playing over two days which made no sense. The series had all the bones to be great, but the writing (and wishy-washy performances) really let it down. Nothing about this series was spectacular except the lighting, and the producers probably knew this because they threw sex scenes everywhere as a diversion from the lack of care taken in the story.
I don’t know if season two has been greenlit, but then again, we are living in the age of phenomenal series. To reimagine Game of Thrones would take more than spectacle but incredible writing and dynamic characters. As a longtime fan of the genre, I hope the SA film industry takes this seriously and puts in the work to make this a formidable genre we can be proud of.