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Johannesburg - If you're a fan of Orange Is The New Black, then keep your eye on the horizon for the brand-new gripping prison series, Lockdown, set to hit our screens on Mzansi Magic (DStv channel 161) on Monday 9 January at 20:00.
Lockdown is set in a fictional all-female prison filled with tension and big drama behind the bars. The series boasts a stellar cast of the who’s who in SA TV. “The characters are authentically South African and their stories are recognisable to many of us. Viewers will alternately love them because they will recognise someone they know, have heard of or even a little bit of themselves in the characters,” explains M-Net’s Head of Drama, Reneilwe Sema.
The inmates
The motley crew of Lockdown’s female inmates is led by the tough Ma Z (Uzalo's Dawn Thandeka King), a leader who wants nothing more than to gain her freedom so that she can become a good mother to the daughter she left on the outside. She is cunning and mastered the skill of manipulation to get what she wants.
One of those people whom Ma Z has manipulated is the beautiful and talented Monde (Z'bondiwe‘s Zola Nombona), a young woman who left the safety of her small-town life to pursue fame and fortune in Joburg. Instead, what she got was infamy, thanks to her wily money-hungry boyfriend/producer Zakes (Luxolo Ndabeni), who introduced her to a notorious lifestyle that landed her in jail.
The often-delusional Slenda (Samsokolo‘s Nomsa Buthelezi) acts as Ma Z’s lieutenant who is loyal to her gang leader and usually sees her being the one executing Ma Z’s bidding.
Ma Z’s arch rival is the tough-as-nails prison boxing champ Tyson (former Scandal! and Backstage actress Lorcia Cooper), who literally fights her demons with her fists. She wants to rule the prison’s other inmates with an iron fist and has her sights at dismantling any kind of hold that Ma Z has.
The guards
Beauty (former Generations actress Slindile Nodangala) is the prison’s Governor. She wants her prison to run smoothly and her “girls” to give her the fewest possible problems. Njabulo (Zabalaza‘s Mthunzi Ntoyi) is Beauty's son who is an academic underachiever who desperately wants to prove his worth to his mother by finally obtaining a civil engineering degree and freeing himself from her prison – in every sense of the word.
Last, but not least, there is the ruthlessly ambitious warder Sharon (Lindiwe Ndlovu, also from Zabalaza), who is Beauty’s right-hand woman but secretly wants to occupy the Governor’s seat herself.
