Blockbuster TV series’ don’t emerge very often from South Africa, but the acclaimed action-thriller Trackers took the approach that if you build it, they will come.
The six-part series, adapted from Deon Myer’s 2011 crime novel of the same name and streaming on Binge, was a trailblazing co-production between local pay-TV channel M-Net, the HBO-affiliated Cinemax and German public broadcaster ZDF, who combined to bring resources and money almost unheard of in South Africa.
The result was a slick-looking product could sit comfortably alongside any streaming content in the world but that also had a distinct local flavour that was celebrated to the point that Trackers outrated Game Of Thrones, Big Little Lies and Chernobyl when it screened in South Africa last year.
Star James Gracie, who plays a former special forces operative in the heart-racing tale of diamond smuggling, wildlife running and international terrorism, says that his compatriots can share an attitude often prevalent in Australia that homegrown products can’t possibly stack up against their international counterparts.
“When you are competing against Hollywood, it becomes the benchmark and then when you do local programming and you don’t have the aesthetic and that look because you can’t afford to do it like that, then people don’t always react as positively as you wish they would,” Gracie says. “But because we had that extra budget, the response was overwhelming.”
Gracie, an established TV and film star in his homeland, says the fact that Trackers embraced the staggering beauty of South Africa – cast and crew would sometimes drive for hours to get the perfect location for a shot – as well as its unique cultures and history is what will set it apart on a global scale. The rise of streaming services and their insatiable demand for content mean that local flavours can be seen as a positive, and a window into countries and cultures other than America.
“When we started Trackers, my character speaks Afrikaans and normally when we used to do co-productions the brief would be ‘can you please speak English and if possible can you please speak English with an American accent’,” Gracie says. “The brief on this was the complete opposite – it was ‘please keep it as authentically culturally accurate as you can and provide those textures’.
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“I think that is what is starting to set programs apart, the difference, the otherness of it. It’s part of the global village that we are becoming more and more easily a part of and more easily able to share our goods across the world.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic took them both back to South Africa, Gracie had been based in Los Angeles with his actor wife Anel Alexander for the past three years, trying to crack the American market.
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But he’d jumped at the chance to reconnect with his homeland while filming Trackers as his character Lemmer raced around the country in cars and planes, shooting guns and wrangling rhinos (“they are super twitchy”).
“Australians and South Africans share that idea of space and of beauty and nature,” he says. “LA is so concrete and we’re always trying to drive out to the hills just to get into some nature. After three years of LA and a lot of grey concrete it was so good. It’s a really beautiful country that we have and when you grow up here it’s like oxygen for your soul.”
Trackers is available to stream on Binge.
