Filming starts on Season 2 of Showmax Original thriller DAM

Filming is underway in Adelaide and Bedford in the Eastern Cape on the second season of DAM, one of the 10 most watched titles on Showmax in 2021 and the most nominated TV drama going into this weekend’s South African Film and Television Awards (SAFTA).

Season 2 of the Showmax Original is set three months after the cult’s ritual sacrifice, which seems to have worked: rain has come and transformed the land. Yola is missing – Sienna fears she is dead – but diamonds, and skeletons, are about to be found.

“This show remains unlike anything else on TV in South Africa,” says four-time SAFTA winner Alex Yazbek, who is up for Best Director at the SAFTAs this weekend. “It’s going to be another twisty and twisted season of love triangles, monsters, and more suppressed memories being uncovered.”

Watch the trailer for Season 1

With 11 nominations, including Best TV Drama, the psychological thriller is in joint second place overall at the SAFTAS. As Yola, Lea Vivier is up for her first SAFTA, for Best Actress. As her sister Sienna, Natasha Loring also earned her first SAFTA nomination, for Best Supporting Actress, while two-time winner Pallance Dladla is up for Best Actor as Themba, Yola’s lover. Hollywood success story Neil Sandilands (Sweet Tooth, The Flash and much more) also cracked his first SAFTA nomination, where he’s up against another first-time acting nominee in DAM co-star Siv Ngesi.
Produced by Picture Tree, DAM is also up for Art Direction (SAFTA winner Sue Steele), Music (two-time SAFTA winner Brendan Jury), Sound (David Oosthuizen), and Makeup and Hairstyling (Mpho Ledwaba and SAFTA winner Smartie Rosina Olifant).

All the SAFTA nominees, other than Sandilands and Ngesi, are back for Season 2, as is three-time winner Tom Marais, who is nominated again this weekend for his cinematography on Reyka.
Other returning cast include SAFTA winners Antoinette Louw (An Act of Defiance), Tarryn Wyngaard (Stam), and Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo (Unmarried), as well as Marvin-Lee Beukes, who is nominated this weekend for his role as Donovan in Suidooster. Gerald Steyn (Meisies Wat Fluit, Fiela Se Kind); Laudo Liebenberg (Black Sails, Die Byl); Francis Chouler (Black Sails); Fleur du Cap winner and 2020 Africa Movie Academy Award nominee Faniswa Yisa (Knuckle City, Blood Psalms); Fleur du Cap winner and three-time SAFTA nominee Jennifer Steyn (Goodbye Bafana); and David James (District 9) are also back this season.

Sunday Times called Season 1 of the psychological thriller “chilling… well-acted, eerily realised and intriguing”; Fortress of Solitude said “it rivals any international production… a must-watch show that promises to fester in your mind long after the credits roll”; and Watkykjy hailed it as the “best South African series I’ve seen to date.”

In the SAFTAs Best TV Drama category, DAM is up against M-Net’s Reyka as well as kykNET’s 4 Mure and Slot, all of which are available to binge on Showmax.

A Showmax Original made in partnership with Picture Tree, DAM Season 2 is now ready to binge.