Whoever said “sex sells” must have been on Showmax’s payroll. 4Play, their latest steamy Kenyan comedy-drama, follows in the footsteps of Big Girl, Small World and Single Kiasi. This time, it explores the debauchery of urban Nairobi men and their struggles. While shifting toward a masculine perspective, 4Play adheres to the same X-rated adult drama formula. With Showmax seemingly doubling down on these uninspired iterations of Sex and the City, one has to wonder what their data says about their perception of the Kenyan audience.
Written by Abigail Arunga (Pepeta) and directed by Mwangi Rurengo, Janet Chumbe (Faithless) and Mkaiwawi Mwakaba (Makosa ni Yangu), 4Play chronicles the escapades of four friends as they navigate lacklustre jobs and passionless relationships. Elsaphan Njora (Kati Kati) plays a gambling and sex addict revelling in his own recklessness. His brother, portrayed by Daniel Weke (Mali), is a music producer whose dialogue revolves almost entirely around his laptop. Maina wa Ndung’u (Volume) appears as a tough-talking, ghetto-inspired club owner, whose demeanour boils down to a scowling Sheng-speaker puffing on cigarettes. Then there’s Bilal Wanjau (It’s a Free Country), reduced (yet again) to the tired trope of a pea-brained, pot-bellied man meant for cheap laughs. Ironically, for a comedy, the show offers little humour and even less intrigue.
Set against a backdrop of brothels, casinos, clubs, and hints of a criminal underworld, 4Play surprises with how little style or substance it delivers. The opening—a slow, provocative pan up a woman’s backside as she climbs a staircase—sets the tone. With sex shoehorned into almost every scene to “keep it spicy,” the show ends up as a flaccid and often disconcerting attempt at eroticism.
The first few episodes of 4Play make no attempt to either endear the characters or give the events of the show any sense of reality. The actors, despite having to imbue an at-times weak script, deliver performances just as frigid, with little to no chemistry between them. The four friends, forced into a frame together, have no sense of familiarity – shuffling from a lack of camaraderie to oversharing in drab monologues. The female characters, reduced to props for the male leads’ horniness, could easily be replaced with mannequins programmed to pop in and out of scenes. Even the two women who seem to have actual storylines—a wife (played by Habida Moloney, Zari) caught in an unbelievable marital tug-of-war and a prostitute (played by Patricia Kihoro, Crime & Justice) secretly reading Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o—are stunted by a lack of development and nuance.
The production, flashy yet lifeless, adds to the lustreless feel of the show. The sets rarely complement the narrative. Offices feel mute, a brothel is decorated like the musings of a music video, and homes are just as lifeless. The direction of the show cuts through scenes like the mindless scrolls of TikTok, and when a scene lingers for more than a few seconds, it rarely stands out as anything other than characters yelling with no intent or personalities to say anything substantive.
4Play does manage some moments of genuine laughter, heartfelt emotions, and even – dare I say – intensity in its whiplashed relationships. Yet, these moments are spread too thin across the series to hold up the heavy doses of diluted plotlines that pulp its runtime. In hindsight, when all the events are taken for their worth, this show feels diced for a much shorter runtime. The highs—exacerbated by existential rebirth from amnesia, love triangles among and around the core group, and emotional rendezvous that, though bloated, have some appeal—are weighed down by the many lows of an invisible crime drama and the extended, underwritten scenes of blatantly ignored characters who only resurface when their bodies are needed to jumpstart the narrative. These elements could have been heightened to more fulfilling levels with a sleeker format.
What results is a show with parts that seem in direct opposition to each other. Some interactions and scenes seem spaced out over months, while others feel like they happen within days. The boys spend so much time in the gym or bars, repeating and deconstructing events that are barely shown. There is so much that happens off-screen, only for its repercussions to emerge later or be redundantly repeated. Conversations that have energy and intensity are either cut short or resolved in the background, while the complex realities of the characters—from parenthood and addictions to mental health and emotional afflictions—are never truly explored beyond humdrum mentions.
From the only two mothers depicted in the show using their children as pawns in relationships to masculinity being reduced to men shouting back and forth in Sheng or openly describing their problems to each other, 4Play knowingly and unknowingly depicts its characters’ flaws so well that it rarely finds the moments to either punish them or give their flaws their due consequence. They all seem bad at what they do. The gambling-addict finance officer says a few words to a white man and is redeemed. An amnesia plotline caused by an accident doesn’t last more than an episode to soften the heart of an ever-absent father. The lazy lawyer gets two scenes of him “actualising” in woodwork and he ends up as the moral compass of the group. And the man suffering from panic attacks and elevated stress levels gets only a Zoom call to summarize his problems. Without much consequence or process shown, there is very little to endear the characters enough to root for them despite their flaws.
The same can be said on the production side. Despite a finale that takes its time to shout out all the artists it features—plus more that crop into the reality of the show—the music grows stale early, with no real injection of the creativity that should personify one of the central characters. The editing and sequencing hide more than they show, or in shots of dialogue, show more than they hide – stitched together to move and pad a story that, most of the time, seems unable to do it itself.
Showmax has yet another addition to its growing list of forgettable shows with no replay value, and it seems there are no signs of letting up. The little moments shows like this offer that are redeemable enough to entice one to get a subscription will work if they can promise to keep this line of eroticism and bland storytelling going, but if not, I doubt these shows will sustain them if they ever slow down. Because if 4Play is the best entertainment tied to men’s realities in Nairobi as the makers would like us to believe, then we are a boring bunch—from the trust fund executives to the drug dealers.
4Play is streaming on Showmax.
