The groom disappears on the eve of the wedding, and the two women who know why have to run. That is the opening premise of Blood Sisters, the four-part thriller that became Netflix’s first original Nigerian series when it premiered on 5 May 2022.
The story
Sarah, played by Ini Dima-Okojie, is about to marry Kola, the son of a powerful Lagos family. Kola is violent. When a confrontation goes wrong on the night before the wedding, Sarah and her best friend Kemi, played by Nancy Isime, are left with a secret and a family hunting for answers. The series follows them as they flee Lagos.
EbonyLife and Netflix
The series was produced by EbonyLife, the media company founded by Mo Abudu, which signed a deal with Netflix to make original content. Blood Sisters was the first series to come out of that partnership. For Netflix, it was a test of whether a Nigerian thriller could find an audience across Africa and beyond.
Two directors
The series was directed by Biyi Bandele and Kenneth Gyang. Bandele was a novelist and playwright as well as a filmmaker, best known for directing Half of a Yellow Sun in 2013, the adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel. Gyang had made the Netflix film Òlòtūré about human trafficking in Lagos.
The cast
Ini Dima-Okojie and Nancy Isime carried the series as the two friends. Deyemi Okanlawon played Kola, and Kate Henshaw played Uduak Ford, the formidable matriarch of his family. Many viewers singled out Henshaw’s performance.
Reception
The series entered Netflix’s global top ten for non-English television in its first weeks and topped the platform’s charts in Nigeria. Critics praised the tension and the performances, while some found the later episodes stretched.
Domestic abuse on screen
The series opened with intimate partner violence, a subject that many Nigerian dramas had treated lightly or not at all. Sarah’s decision to marry an abusive man because of family pressure and social expectations struck a chord with viewers, and the show started conversations online about abuse in relationships.
Losing Biyi Bandele
Bandele died in August 2022, three months after Blood Sisters was released. He was 54. His last completed feature, Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman, an adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s play, was released on Netflix later that year.
Blood Sisters proved that a Nigerian series could go out to the world on the same night as an American one. It is also a reminder of the talent the industry lost when Bandele died just as it was opening up.
