21st February 2024
Own Correspondent
Crime, passion, drugs, double-dealing and a divided city are all on show in the first official trailer for M-Net’s new international co-production, White Lies, starring award-winning actress Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, Picnic at Hanging Rock) and Brendon Daniels (Four Corners, Skemerdans, Trackers).
White Lies is an urgent exploration of power and privilege, inequality and identity, with an end-to-end array of characters – all entangled in a riveting, twisted murder mystery.
Investigative journalist Edie Hansen (Dormer) is stunned by the murder of her estranged brother in a home invasion. She is rapidly pulled into the nightmarish aftermath, when she’s reunited with her orphaned teenage niece and nephew in the most difficult of circumstances.
As Edie hunts for the killer across the complicated, beautiful city of Cape Town, she crosses from the leafy Southern Suburbs of white privilege to the poverty-ravaged badlands and back again, discovering that evil knows no boundaries – and it doesn’t discriminate.
The story dissects an inward-looking, affluent community, structured around a very personal psychological and emotional journey, in the vein of bingeable shows like Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. White Lies is at once a gripping mystery, a complex family drama and a searing examination of a deeply divided society struggling to reckon with the sins of its past.
White Lies is produced by Harriet Gavshon and Nimrod Geva for Quizzical Pictures, with Natalie Dormer and Darrel Bristow-Bovey also serving as executive producers. The series’ lead director is The Wound’s John Trengove. Directing alongside Trengove are Thati Pele (Lerato), Catharine Cooke (Reyka) and Christiaan Olwagen (Poppie Nongena, Kanarie). Julie Hodge is executive producing on behalf of Fremantle, who is also distributing the series internationally.
White Lies was created by Sean Steinberg, and Matt Western was the casting director for UK cast. The eight-part series premieres on M-Net (DStv Channel 102) on 7 March at 8pm. Stream it on DStv Stream or watch at your leisure on DStv Catch Up. Visit the M-Net Website and join the conversation on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
