Mo-Faya, the new Kenyan series on Netflix follows a young woman named Zawadie (Lorna Lemi), whose quest for a fresh start with her boyfriend Brian (Brahim Ouma) takes unforeseen turns. Upon the show’s announcement in November, creator and director Rueben Odanga described it as a “drama with telenovela elements.” At its core, Mo-Faya is a story about gangs, police officers, criminal operations, shoot-outs, hell, they even have a ‘guy in the chair.’ Perhaps, in their quest not to be labelled as “just another Kenyan crime show out there”, the makers wanted to distinguish themselves from Kenya’s most popular genre that has defined our stories for years. But make no mistake, Mo-Faya is a crime drama in every sense of the genre.
So, is Mo-Faya worth watching? The short answer is yes, it is. It’s a fun binge-worthy show – entertaining and quite thrilling. As a product and as a pulpy Netflix show, I can see the general audience feeling fulfilled with this material. However, as a work of television, it’s a monument of archetypes of the crime genre. This is a show that gains from having the audience aware of the tropes and traditions of stories about disenfranchised youth taking to crime as a way of survival.
One of the charms of Mo-Faya, other than seeing new and young faces on screen (refreshing), is its pedal-to-the-metal approach. From the pilot episode, it gives the audience what it really came for – thrill and action. But there’s only so much action the show is able to offer before the necessary quieter moments of character building and drama, and here, unfortunately, is where Mo-Faya loses its momentum.
Drama has been defined as the moment a character (and we, the audience, by extension) discovers new information, and how they react to it. As stated earlier, this show is a jumble of crime-flick clichés. As the audience, we can see whatever twists and turns they have in store for us from a mile away. Nothing is new; nothing is shocking. Oh, he was working for such and such the entire time? Called it. The characters’ reactions to everything happening are also quite predictable. Thus, Mo-Faya lacks dramatic force. To put it simply, the show feels more like a reenactment of crime genre tropes, with all the archetypes and ideas we’ve seen before, strung together without the coherence needed to truly stand out.
For instance – spoiler alert – when the lead character Brian and his best friend Kevin (played by Tobit Tom) are surrounded by police in the penultimate episode, Kevin smiles devilishly at Brian before unsheathing his gun (needlessly) and getting brutally shot down. Some sort of outlaw honour. We know this shot. We recognise this impulse, executed more convincingly in other films and TV shows. Here, the moment feels unearned because Kevin’s character hasn’t been shown to be as reckless as Brian in the past. We recognize a lie in the story but I assume it is easily forgiven because of the unconscious catharsis of seeing the well-known archetype played out in our national context – at Nairobi University main campus, no less. But how long will this kind of satisfaction last?
I’ve often asked myself why the crime genre is so popular in Kenya. I think it’s conditioning from all the shows we grew up watching on our local stations. It’s easily recognisable, it grabs attention, and it emanates a sense of ‘importance’. Crime dramas are television’s outreach and aspiration to cinema. They make the screen seem bigger than it actually is. But in truth, I blame the audience members. Yes, you.
Odanga is one of my favourite Kenyan filmmakers working today. His 2021 film Nafsi still holds one of my most glowing reviews, a project where you can clearly see the touch of a true artist behind the lens. I cannot say the same for Mo-Faya, a very generic Netflix show. There’s nothing unique or special about it, and yet somehow, deep in Netflix’s algorithm, the streamer has determined that this is what the audience wants, and that is exactly what they keep making.
As far as Mo-Faya’s performances go, Lemi delivers a satisfactory turn as Zawadie, our female lead, moving from a scared little girl who’s lost her mother in episode one to a rallying criminal activist by the finale. One isn’t really shaken up by this evolution but I can hardly blame Lemi for that, she is ultimately failed by the script. However, as Brian, our leading man Ouma, I’m afraid, is in desperate need of an acting coach. One can clearly see him ‘acting’ – or at least trying to – rather than being immersed into the reality of his make-believe world. I wasn’t moved by him in Pepeta, and sadly, the same applies to Mo-Faya.
Unlike Brian, Kevin, his best friend, is very charming and natural on screen. Even in his quiet internalised moments – like handling traditional family business with a council of elders – Kevin is still a badass. And Tobit Tom plays him with such panache, the illusion is never lost in his performance. Even when he acts stupidly, we still like him. Contrasted to Ouma’s Brian, one truly believes Kevin’s hard-knocked persona.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, points to a recurring issue: we have a-leading-man-in-a-crime-drama-problem on our local screens. Save for Nairobi Half Life, it seems we’ve been struggling to find truly compelling leading men who can elevate this genre and make it stand out.
From Volume to Pepeta to Click Click Bang to Mo-Faya, and so forth, the pattern repeats itself. It’s usually the sidekick, the best friend, or the secondary lead who wins our hearts. They tend to be brash and funny, without the forced (and often unconvincing) soul-searching expected from the protagonist. If Kenyan stories – the crime dramas here at least – could just cut out the unnecessary introspection, and instead double down into a character’s dark, unapologetic nature, then we might finally get an honest-to-God leading man. A leading man must possess such force of personality that the script, and all the crazy events that happen within a crime drama, are not only believable but vicariously enjoyable. They should exude charm, gusto and conviction, with introspection used sparingly, except when it deepens the narrative tension. As it is with our crime dramas, I wouldn’t join our leading men’s cults if they had one. So, when all the UoN students go to the streets for Ouma’s Brian, I ask myself – did they just not have any important classes that day?
Blessing Lung’aho delivers a standout character-actor performance as a detective who’s unlike any of the personas he’s played before. It’s a very giving performance, and role really, as an industry veteran, to all the newcomers in the show. And Alice Ngina gives perhaps the finest performance as a psychopathic Deputy OCS. Her double dealings and reptilian-like cunning shine through the screen, the blackness of her soul making the blue of her uniform much darker.
Mo-Faya is written by veteran Edijoe Mwaniki, and since we know his body of work, he’s capable of far better material than this. The inclusion of scenes set in Western Kenya is a commendable touch, but the story could have embraced more deeper local roots, not just by way of setting, location and language, but by all sensibilities. Some of the crime tropes could have also highlighted and made stronger the local elements in the story. The makers had a very interesting premise, but what they lacked was faith in the story. Rather than trusting in it, they had to over-saturate the script with worn-out crime drama clichés, ultimately robbing Mo-Faya of an authentic identity.
But once again, I blame the audience.
This is what you want.
Mo-Faya is streaming on Netflix.
