The trio of formally dressed ‘professionals” I run into at Commerce Park, an office park in Rivonia Road, blend in with the corporate surroundings, except they look like they’ve been here for hours. They turn out to be extras in a scene in The Lab‘s second season, which recently returned to the SABC3 schedule by popular demand.
In the scene Alex Gainsford, who plays an English businessman, tries to poach the investment company’s resident wünderkind Mingus (Mothusi Magano). In The Lab‘s reception area Gainsford is confronted by Mingus, whose life and career have been floundering as a result of a spiralling cocaine addiction. Anxious and runny-nosed, Mingus mumbles a desperate apology to Gainsford, swearing to pull himself together, only to be roughly shoved off and sent hurtling through the door on to the paving outside.
This violent scene is typical of the heightened drama of the second season. The first episode set the tone, with Jaws (Fana Mokoena) beating a friend and business associate with a golf club after suspecting him of having had relations with his former wife.
While the first season focused largely on the business dealings of The Lab, the second deals more with the private lives of its executives. ‘The first season is always the soul of the cultural creation, less for demand than for the expression of what was happening in the country,” says producer Ben Horowitz. ‘In the subsequent season the entertainment factor starts creeping in, you up the stakes to keep the audiences, with characters getting into more evil things.”
The Lab was created by a team that included Megato Strategies and Curious Pictures and was intended to provide a ‘warts-and-all look into the world of black economic empowerment [BEE] and not to make a political statement”, says writer and director Barry Berk. ‘It looks at issues of enrichment versus empowerment and aspects of greed and acquisitive culture, which are endemic to any capital system.”
While political statements are shied away from, The Lab from the start took a moral and somewhat cynical view of BEE. In the first episode Pearl (Nambitha Mpumlwana) was questioned by a pesky business journalist about the disconnection between empowerment and enrichment, to which she responded that there could be no empowerment before enrichment.
The journalist argues that would depend on the altruism of the rising black middle class. But when she asks Pearl if she thinks the middle class is altruistic, Pearl loses her temper and tells her to get off the moral high ground since she is a beneficiary of a middle-class upbringing herself. In the subsequent article Pearl is presented as little more than a useful figurehead with government credentials at The Lab .
In the current season possibly a bit too much effort has been taken to reveal the dark side of the BEE party. But even the heavy conflicts seem natural. ‘For me part of its depth is the naturalism in the dialogue, which does not allow the subtext to be spoken,” says Berk. ‘South African dramas take their cues from soapies, where the subtext is always spoken, but in real life people don’t say what they mean.”
One can’t ignore the drama’s substantial budget, which allows it to make use of varying locations, adding to its natural feel. ‘On location things are much slower because nobody’s been there before and we have to plan and deal with the public,” says Horowitz.
This season, without giving too much away, the moral decay continues against a backdrop of increasing opulence, suggesting the audiences are as greedy as the characters portrayed.