A group of Harare’s working wives together with their husbands and boyfriend’s is set to invade Sam Levy’s Ster-Kinekor movie theatre as they come to watch the screening of a new television series ‘Harare’s Working Wives’ on Saturday April 28.
The series adapts Sharon Bwanya’s Facebook Blog Posts “The Real Working Wive’s of Leafy-ish Harare.”
“When Ndiani Studios producer Tendayi Nyeke read the first blog post she immediately connected with the material and was convinced others would be too,” read a statement from Ndiani Studios.
“On a brief visit to Harare a week later, as a one man band, she took a camera with no lighting or assistance on sound and performed an experiment. Actors improvised scenes in a Harare cafe. The video was posted online even though it was technically imperfect, received over 13500 hits on Facebook in five days. “Ndiani Studios believes this is because it satirically explores the hidden lives of Harare’s women and resonates with those on the continent and in the diaspora.”
To date two pilot episodes have been produced to assist in securing broadcasting rights and fundraising to complete the production of the first season.
The series is set in Zimbabwe’s capital city and explores the crème of Harare’s high society ranging from middle class women to the more elite of the gated housing communities.
“The Harare we will see in the series is a mixed bag of its former economic hot pot but also the place where the haves and have not’s are clearly defined. Some of the women whose journeys we will follow will straddle both. We will some practice the high morality of the city’s hey days whilst others have made their own rules to keep afloat and that in many instances will lead to explosions,” further read the statement.
SERIES SYNOPSIS
Mai MJ first name Rumbi is one of a network Harare’s middle class that will do anything to maintain the facade of the lives everyone thinks they have. At 33 years old, Mai MJ is a mother of one, has been dating her “baby daddy” for 14 years. And in Harare, this is a big taboo. With no sign of a wedding in sight, over the years, Rumbi has tried everything from actually being a great girlfriend to soliciting the help of darker sources to force Tafadzwa to make an honest woman out of her. When we start the story, she’s close, really close to getting what she wants. Then one day she discovers that someone in her circle knows her secret and threatens to reveal it to everyone. Should who Mai MJ really is be exposed, everything she’s ever wanted and more will be lost. Throughout the series she will investigate her friends one by one to see who knows what, why they are doing this and if she can stop them. In the process she unwittingly digs deeper into the lives of those around her and discovers things they too would rather keep hidden.
The more Mai MJ uncovers about each of her friends the more she realizes that these women are not friends at all. Will Mai MJ get to the bottom of who knows what and stop them before everything she’s worked so hard for is destroyed
