Your Plan B Afrikaans crime watch

Is it a crime to rip off a gangster? What if they have a lovely painting and you really, really want it? After playing an honest cop in the true-crime drama Griekwastad, Arnold Vosloo’s ready to play “what if” on the wrong side of the law – in the heist movie, Plan B. 

Watch the Plan B trailer here

In this light-hearted kykNET crime caper series – loosely based on Deon Meyer’s (Devil’s Peak, Trackers) novel Wie Met Vuur Speel – conmen Paul Schmidt (Arnold) and Ivan Malan (Tim Theron) have their eyes set on gang boss Zeev Lanksy’s (André Jacobs) pride and joy: his original Vermeer painting, the Flame Maiden. The painting is valued at R590 483 400 (over half a billion Rand, or a round €30 million) according to art appraiser Hildegard Klaus (Dorette Potgieter). So there’s plenty of money to go round if they can nick it!

While plotting their perfect heist, Paul and Ivan rope in bookshop owner Ragel Bergh (Amalia Uys), who was swindled out of her inheritance by Zeev’s son Joshua (Armand Aucamp), along with Ivan’s charming former colleague Joe Moroko (Sobantu Nqayi), and crackerjack computer whiz Kate Maponyane (Wanda Banda). 

Binge Binge Plan B now.

But as with any South African crime story, it’s not really about the painting, or the money. It’s about who we are, the history we share, and how we react when we believe that something was taken from us. And if you’d like to sink your teeth into more Afrikaans crime stories, come join our neighbourhood watch with these 10 series and movies. 

Crime watch: Afrikaans division

1. Griekwastad

This crime drama movie adapts Jacques Steenkamp’s true-crime novel The Griekwastad Murders: The Crime that Shook South Africa. Colonel Dick de Waal (Arnold Vosloo) is called to investigate a triple farm murder with a lone survivor – the family’s teenaged son, who raced into town to report the tragedy. The more Colonel de Waal digs, though, the more worrying his conclusion becomes.

It seems the tiny town of Griekwastad is home to familicide and family rape. Look out for interviews and evidence from key real-life role-players like Dick de Waal, as well as forensic and ballistic specialists who shed light on the haunting murder case.

Stream Griekwastad now. Also watch: Huisgenoot Ware Lewensdramas Season 1, episode 3.

2. Koek

Looking for something less gruesome that still dishes up a feast of a plot and plenty of dirty (dancing) deeds? Cindy Swanepoel plays frumpy 40-year-old doctor Christelle, who’s forced to turn to the pole (and some less savoury shenanigans that’ll make dark use of her surgery skills) when her plot to find out what her cheating husband is doing behind her back leads to the death of one of madam Moekie Koekemoer’s (Sandra Prinsloo) exotic dancers.

Once Moekie – a leopard-print wearing, scenery-devouring mob boss, organ trafficker, and dirty dancing club owner – has her lacquered claws in Christelle, the doctor will have to boogie to her tune. Koek boasts multiple Silwerskerm Awards, and a new season is in the oven for 2025.

Binge Koek now.

3. Die Byl

Piet van der Bijl (Waldemar Schultz), aka Byl, and his team of experts including Sergeant Juan Stuurman (Marvin-Lee Beukes), profiler Captain Lena Maree (Lika Berning), and pathologist Doctor Fritz Barnard (Eric Nobbs) take us deep into the psychology of South Africa’s (fictional) common murderers and sinister serial killers in this kykNET crime thriller series.

Die Byl has sacrificed his life to his job, and refers to the killers as his “clients”. But if you think that’s creepy, wait till you meet the killers themselves…especially the ones who become just as obsessed with Byl as he is with them, like Byl’s nemesis, Adriaan Klopper (Laudo Liebenberg) – one of those nightmare monsters with a knack for coming back from the dead.

Binge Die Byl Season 1-5 now. 

Also watch: Huisgenoot Ware Lewensdramas Season 3, episode 10 centres on the late South African detective Brigadier Piet Byleveld – the real-life inspiration for Die Byl (and an advisor on the series) – as friends and colleagues take viewers through some of his most high-profile cases. 

4. Die Boland Moorde

We heard it through the grapevine: something wicked is happening behind South Africa’s tourism-poster-perfect winelands. The Boland Investigative Unit led by Warrant Officers Andre Fourie (Stian Bam) and Shane Williams (Brendon Daniels) use their keen eye for human nature to dig into the jealousies, passions and schemes that led to people poisoning the teacups and garrotting the vicar in and around Stellenbosch. For fans of series like Recipes For Love And Murder, this is one of our “cosy mystery” shows.

Binge Die Boland Moorde Season 1-2 now.

5. Spoorloos

Each season of this crime thriller anthology series, starring a who’s-who of Afrikaans performers, centres on a small town where someone has vanished without a trace, and long-buried secrets hold the key to cracking the case. In the first season, based on Vernon W Baumann’s 2014 novel, Daddy Long Legs, a serial killer’s unsolved killing spree has transformed Digtersdal into a ghost town over the past 13 years.

In Season 2, there are a lot of guilty faces when a Matric student who’s been in a coma for the past two years finally wakes up, and soon rumours about witchcraft start circulating. Season 3 takes us to a Northern Cape farm where two people are dead and a baby is missing. And in Season 4, a woman’s old boyfriend is on the hook when she briefly reappears in his life before vanishing again mysteriously. 

Binge Spoorloos Season 1-4 now.

6. Projek Dina

Like Spoorloos, this police procedural drama series centres on missing persons cases. Facing a flood of urgent, life-or-death cases, Brigadier Patricia Dlomo (Vicky Kente) creates the Rapid Response investigative task force, headed by Captain Deon Visagie (Tim Theron). The investigators, including the brilliantly intuitive sergeant Lux Dladla (Chumani Pan), team glue in the form of Deputy Officer Ronel Oosthuizen (Chanelle de Jager) whose twin sister Dina went missing as a child and has never been found, and civilian hacker Charlene “Charlie” Botha (Kay Smith), put their lives on ice to find victims before time runs out.

The series has its roots deep in South African true-crime cases, and real-life former Hawks investigator Marcell van der Watt acted as a consultant, along with Missing Children SA’s Nicky Rheeder and Bianca van Aswegen. 

PS: look out for guest star Crystal-Donna Roberts as desperate mother, Bonita, who’s wracked with grief and fear when her daughter is kidnapped in Season 1, episode 4.

Binge Projek Dina Season 1-3 now.

Also watch: One of South Africa’s most notorious missing persons cases, that of Zephany Nurse/Miché Solomon, is detailed in the documentary Girl Taken, and in Huisgenoot Ware Lewensdramas Season 2, episode 10.

7. Siende Blind

SAPS psychological profiler Lena Schoeman (Liezl de Kock) can’t help but pick up dangerous secrets when she’s forced to spend lockdown trapped in the house with her toyboy husband Roelof (Pietie Beyers), her mother-in-law Marinette (Hanli Rolfes), and Roelof’s young son Henry (Christopher van der Westhuizen). Her only outlet for her suspicions is her online connection with her colleague, Ricky (Keenan Arrison), as they break down old serial killer cases together, while Lena becomes ever more convinced that her in-laws are outlaws.

Binge Siende Blind now.

8. Donkerbos

This eerily atmospheric Showmax Original serial killer drama takes us deep into the forests of Donkerbos, Limpopo, where six children have been ritually murdered. The children’s bodies lie in shallow graves around a tree trunk. Each body is covered in German words and there are halos made of broken mirrors above each of their heads, while drawings of eyes watch over them from the surrounding trees, walls and rocks.

A disgraced detective, Stephanie “Fanie” van Wyk (Eric Wessels), who’s built a home for herself in Donkerbos, has to confront her past while working to gain the trust of the community. Can she solve the killer’s riddles before any more children are taken? The series takes a hard-hitting, uncomfortable look at hidden child abuse and how communities protect abusers at the expense of the most vulnerable.

Binge Donkerbos now.

9. Outopsie

Senior forensic pathologist Dr Hestelle van Staden takes us into the intricacies of how science has played a key role in solving murder cases, and clearing suspicion surrounding accidental deaths, in this true-crime series.

Some of the cases that captured South Africa’s attention include the hijacking of reggae star Lucky Dube (Season 1, episode 2), filmmaker Carlos Carvalho getting killed by a giraffe (Season 1, episode 4), the death of journalist and writer Heidi Holland (Season 1, episode 6), the 2015 Rhodes Park rapes and murders (Season 1, episode 13), and local tragedies like the series of deaths at the scenic Voëlklip lookout point (Season 2, episode 5), our road accident deaths (Season 3, episode 3), and the deaths of 43 spectators during the 2011 Soweto Derby Ellis Park Staium Disaster (Season 2, episode 12). 

Binge Outopsie Season 1-3 now.

10. Stella Murders

In this true-crime documentary series, the Devilsdorp team turn their attention to gender-based violence through the 2018 murders of boarding school students Sharnelle Hough (17) and Marna Engelbrecht (16), which were staged as suicides.

Stella Murders is part of the growing movement to swing true-crime coverage away from sensationalising the killer. Instead, the storytelling aims to breathe life back into the victims and their communities, and to contextualise each case so that we can understand how our culture breeds killers and sets up women and children as prey. The teens’ family members sit down for interviews, along with police and a lead journalist covering the case.

Binge Stella Murders now.

Also watch: Huisgenoot Ware Lewensdramas Season 5, episode 13. And look out for the official Stella Murders companion podcast.

Start your true-crime journey here!

Huisgenoot Ware Lewensdramas

SA’s oldest and most popular magazine Huisgenoot looks back at some of its biggest stories in its 105-year publication run, with the journalists who covered the stories explaining not only their process of writing the features, but the events and stories that readers don’t necessarily remember or know about. While there are some feel-good stories, it’s the crime and murder cases that take centre stage in this docu-series. Many of the stories have gone on to inspire full-length true-crime documentaries and series. So look out for these episodes:

Season 1, episode 6: Miss SA finalist Vanessa Goosen’s drug smuggling arrest is also covered in one of the themes of Bolhuis Season 1, episode 3, which centres on South Africans serving long sentences in overseas prisons after being enticed into smuggling. 

Season 1, episode 13: Oscar Pistorius’ murder of Reeva Steenkamp is also covered in My Name is Reeva, which focuses on the stolen life of the victim and the gender-based violence epidemic.

Season 2, episode 5: Christopher Panayiotou’s murder of his wife Jade Panayiotou is also covered in episode 7 of true crime series Strangers You Know.

Season 2, episode 13: 2016’s so-called Krugersdorp Appointment Murders also come under the spotlight in the smash hit, SAFTA-winning true-crime documentary series Devilsdorp.

Season 3, episode 5: When Gill Packham’s body was found in the boot of her burned-out car, suspicion slowly settled on her husband Rob. The murder is also spotlighted in episode 3 of Strangers You Know.

Season 3, episode 13: The kidnapping of students Cheslin Marsh and Hannah Cornelius, along with Hannah’s rape and murder and the impact of their loved ones, come under the spotlight in the tragic documentary film Last Blue Ride.

Season 7, episode 1: The so-called Sunday Rapist, Johannes Jacobus Steyn, kept on killing teenaged girls after spending three years behind bars for sexual assault. The victims’ side of the story comes into focus in Outopsie Season 2, episode 8.

Season 8, episode 9: Gender-based violence surfaces again in the story of how one woman’s ex paid an assassin to shoot her, killing her unborn baby Jenna May, in a case that’s also explored in Strangers You Know episode 4.

Season 9, episode 12: The kidnapping, torture and murders of lesbian couple Joey and Anisha van Niekerk in the Mooinooi Farm Murders is also explored in episode 1 of Strangers You Know.

Season 9, episode 13: The factors that went into creating one of South Africa’s most notorious rapists and murderers, Stewart “Boetie Boer” Wilken, are explored, along with his crimes, in the chilling documentary series Boetie Boer, and in episode 7 of Catch Me a Killer. 

Season 10, episode 6: Serial killer Norman Afzal Simons, also known as The Station Strangler, gets a deep dive in the documentary film The Station Strangler, as well as in the first two episodes of Catch Me a Killer. 

Season 10, episode 10: Look out for more angles on former Blue Bull-turned-axe-killer Joseph Ntshongwana in The Dark Side of Glory episode 1 and Outopsie Season 2, episode 1.

Binge Huisgenoot Ware Lewensdramas Season 1-10 now.

PS: Season 1, episode 5 of the family murder-focussed true crime series Huisgenoot Ware Lewensdramas: Vlees & Bloed has your crib notes for the jaw-dropping true crime documentary series Rosemary’s Hit List.

Just looking for more art heists? Also watch…

Inside

Prepare for insanity after Nemo (Willem Dafoe), cat burglar and art thief becomes trapped in a posh, high-tech New York penthouse apartment along with its priceless art collection, after he trips the apartment’s airtight security system.

It’s lockdown madness all over again as Nemo has to figure out how to survive in an apartment that’s designed as a soulless, hoarder’s gallery rather than a home. When the police don’t arrive, Nemo starts losing his mind, analysing the art, forming attachments to people he sees via the security cameras, and hallucinating wildly. 

Stream Inside now.

The Goldfinch

Based on Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, this film follows Theodore Decker’s (Ansel Elgort, with Oakes Fegley playing 13-year-old Theodore) life after he loses his mom during the bombing of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the urging of a dying man named Welty (Robert Joy), Theodore steals a small painting from the museum – The Goldfinch, by Dutch master Carel Fabritius.

His new foster mother, Mrs Barbour (Nicole Kidman), encourages Theodore’s growing obsession with art, while he connects with Welty’s niece Pippa (Ashleigh Cummings, with Aimee Laurence as the young Pippa), before his estranged dad Larry (Luke Wilson) drags him off to Las Vegas. There Theo falls in with young Ukrainian troublemaker Boris (Aneurin Barnard, with Finn Wolfhard as the young Boris). It’s just the start of a series of wanderings, tragedies, deaths, reconnections, and discoveries, throughout which Theo has only one thing to cling to: The Goldfinch.

Stream The Goldfinch now.