[star rating=”4″] THE GIRL FROM ST AGNES. Showmax.
MEGAN FURNISS reviews
The Girl from St Agnes is an eight-part series, now on Showmax, and it is very, very good. It follows the genre of a murder thriller with as many twists, turns and possibilities as there are selfies at a girls’ boarding school.
A school girl, Lexie Summerfield (Jane DeWet) is found dead. Who she was, and what lead to her death, are questions that reveal themselves slowly as the drama teacher, Kate Ballard (Nina Milner) searches for answers. Kate is initially the only one who believes that Lexie’s death is a murder, but she gets everyone’s back up, and accuses people before she has evidence. All sorts of dark and nasty secrets are revealed and nobody gets off lightly.
Set locally in an area outside Pietermaritzburg, the story follows St Agnes’s pupils and staff, their families, and the boys of St Agnes’s brother school, unearthing the ugliness of what lies beneath the surface of what should be two prestigious, predominantly white, private schools.
The Clayton family are at the centre of it. Gary Clayton (brilliantly played by Robert Hobbs) is the archetype of toxic white male violence and superiority. He is an alcoholic, with aggressive behaviour, and his wife and children suffer because of it, particularly his son Jason (Tristan de Beer), head boy of the boy’s school, who has some horrible demons of his own. Phillipa Clayton (Tessa Jubber), wife and mother, makes her own tragic mistakes, with devastating consequences, and daughter Megan (Paige Bonnin gives a stand out performance here) is the carrier of so much of the suffering.
Complex and dark
The storyline and characters are complex and dark, and because the local angle is felt in every scene, South Africans do not come away looking very good. Politically, socially, and in relationships, the adults are dysfunctional, repressed, violent and sexually deviant, with pasts that haunt secretly, addictions that distort, and aggressions that play out over generations. The children fare no better. They are corrupt, manipulative, pained, anxious, hysterical and morbid with deep holes in their souls that are not being filled or met by those that take care of them.
The Girl from St Agnes is so fraught, it is almost heavy handed, until we accept that all the characters are taken from real life. It’s pretty uncomfortable. And all of these parts, big and small, are brilliantly played. I loved Charmain Weir Smith as Lexie’s mother, Jerry Mofokeng as Mr Gwala, and all the girls and boys were excellent.
The Girl from St Agnes is well written, beautifully directed, and superbly cast, making it horrifying and believable. My only niggle, and this is a deeply personal one, is that I found the music, particularly the songs, repetitive and trite, and derivative of the fashionable soundtracks of other overseas thrillers of this vein. It was an opportunity, that was missed, to deliver something more original and local sounding.
This series has been picked up internationally, which is both a testimony to how good it is and also how much this creepy murder mystery appeals. I am proud that this local one stands up to its international competition.
What: The Girl from St Agnes
Where: Showmax
WS
