DAM is a small-town psychological thriller that premiers on Monday, 22 February.
Lea Vivier stars as Yola Fischer, who returns from Chile to the Eastern Cape to bury her father. She discovers he’s left his farm to her, to the irritation of her sister, Sienna. It turns out this may be more of a curse than a blessing, as the house seems to be trying to tell her something. But with her mother institutionalised and her own meds running out, Yola has to wonder if the spirits are real or just in her head?
Alex Yazbek wrote and directed the twisty and twisted eight-part series.
DAM builds on the success of Showmax’s first two scripted originals – the Safta-winning mockumentary Tali’s Wedding Diary and Safta-nominated murder mystery The Girl From St Agnes, both of which set first-day viewing records on the platform.
DAM was filmed on location in the Bedford and Adelaide towns of the Amathole District in the Eastern Cape. Judging by the trailer, cinematographer Tom Marais has clearly made the most of the locations, which mark a welcome change from the cities we usually see in SA series.
But if you spell DAM backwards, you get MAD, and there’s plenty of madness lurking beneath the beauty of his framing. Pigs die with more violence than necessary; a psychiatric hospital patient uses unorthodox art materials; and wall-mounted barbel fish seem disturbingly popular ...
“This town, look at it, it’s perfect on the outside,” Bernoldus, the local handyman, tells Yola during the ominous trailer. “But underneath, there’s a lot going on.”
Pallance Dladla co-stars as Themba, Yola’s love interest, a biker on the run.
Neil Sandilands (Bernoldus) and Natasha Loring (Sienna) took a break from Hollywood for the series: Sandilands has appeared in shows such as The Flash, The 100, The Americans and Hap and Leonard, as well as films such as News of the World, opposite Tom Hanks, while Loring has voiced game characters in the Star Wars and Game of Thrones franchises, after starring in international series such as Beaver Falls.
Premiering Monday, 22 February 2021
