WRITTEN/CREATED BY PAUL BUYS AND ANNEMARIE VAN BASTEN.
STARRING ARNOLD VOSLOO.
This South African crime drama series premiered on Netflix just a couple of weeks ago, and I’m here to tell you that if the writers come up with, say, another eighty episodes at least as good, we could be looking at the new THE SOPRANOS, still the best television programme ever written.
LUDIK, the first Netflix show to feature the sexy-sounding Afrikaans as a language, has several parallels with THE SOPRANOS, starting with an anti-hero who could give Tony Soprano a run for his money in the heart-throb stakes.
Daan Ludik is a handsome South African furniture billionaire in his fifties who smuggles a few diamonds on the side. Well, he didn’t get that mansion and that car and that trophy wife by selling a few pouffes, innit? Tony Soprano is a mafioso whose waste management business is a front for his other less savoury activities. Less savoury than waste management? You’d better believe it.
Daan has a beautiful blonde trophy wife called Anet, who spends all day swilling wine in her bathrobe. She probably married Daan for the luxurious lifestyle he can afford to give her, yet she bitches at him for working all the time instead of dancing attendance on her and their young son, Danie. Tony’s blonde bitchy wife Carmela has to contend with goomars or mistresses as well, so Daan’s wife should at least be content that he’s faithful.
Each wife will be unfaithful, or at least nearly unfaithful, one with a priest followed by an underling of her husband’s, and the other wife with another woman, a psychologist. (In LUDIK, it’s the son Danie who’s getting the psycho-analysing, and in THE SOPRANOS, it’s the head honcho himself.)
Daan was not pampered or spoiled as a boy. He endured savage whippings from his father in his childhood, and he got nothing for nothing. Both Daan and Tony favour tough love, and the odd clip on the side of the head, for their soft-as-butter ‘sensitive’ sons, Danie and Anthony Junior, but the mothers intervene to keep the lads tied to their apron strings, much to the fathers’ joint disgust.
Daan’s beautiful but temperamental, bitchy grown-up daughter Louise seems to have a similar kind of love-hate relationship with him to the one Meadow Soprano has with her Pops. Neither girl wants their alpha male Papas to be telling them what to do at this stage of their lives, either with their careers or with their respective black boyfriends. That’s not me being racist there, by the way. That’s the two dads. Tony comes straight out with it, though Daan is just marginally more subtle about it. ‘Stay away from my daughter!’
Daan’s dad, a preacher due for retirement, is a mean-spirited old bastard called Viljoen. His successful and generous son Daan will pay for everything for him, no matter how much it costs, but the old buzzard is rude, ungrateful and horrible to Daan about it. When he has a cup of tea at his son’s house, he says, how much do I owe you for the tea?
Tony Soprano also has a nightmare parent, his mum Livia, who for a long time refuses to go into a nursing home for her own good and safety. (‘It’s not a nursing home; it’s a retirement community!’) Let’s not forget how she puts an actual hit out on her son at one stage in the series, and how she resists all Tony’s attempts to make the old witch happy.
Both men, Daan and Tony, have their fair share of lame ducks and hangers-on swinging out of them. Daan has his dead sister Linda’s deadbeat alcoholic hubby, Swys, to contend with. Tony has his drug-addicted, hot-headed nephew Christopher, his loser friend, restauranteur Artie Bucco, his hippy sister Janice with the carpal tunnel syndrome and her disability cheques, and finally his elderly Uncle Junior Soprano, a man who’s having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he’s not the capo di tutti capo anymore…
Daan has the evil gun-running gangster Arend Brown as his sworn enemy, and Tony has new enemies every week, ranging from rival mob boss Phil Leotardo to the FBI. They each have a rat in their camp too, by the way, and feelings will be properly hurt when the news comes out.
THE SOPRANOS has the Bada-Bing; LUDIK has Andy’s Strip Club. Well, I guess it does exactly what it does on the tin. For a series with such a sexy premise and such a fanciable male lead, there’s a surprising absence of sex in it. I waited all series for a glimpse of Daan Ludik’s sculpted, muscular butt mid-coitus or in the shower, but, alas, he keeps his towel on for the full six episodes. Advice to the writers for Series Two: lose the towel…!
If you think you recognise Arnold Vosloo, the man who plays him, it’s probably because he plays the Mummy in the films THE MUMMY and THE MUMMY RETURNS, in 1999 and 2001. He has hardly any dialogue in these two brilliant action and adventure movies set in modern and Ancient Egypt, but he’s so charismatic and gorgeous that you don’t mind a bit. He’s all about the confident movements of his magnificent, semi-clad body. His sneer is second to none, his arrogant superiority lovely to look at. His gorgeous lips and eyes do all the talking.
And his character of Daan Ludik is not at all the a**hole he was described as by another reviewer. He loves his family, lame ducks and all, and will always put them first in his own way. That might mean mostly neglecting them emotionally and even physically much of the time, but it’s ultimately for their own good, lol. Daan Ludik knows what’s best for his family, and that’s the end of it.
I hope that LUDIK will get the go-ahead from Netflix to come back with a second series. It has got to continue, for me and all the other women who fell in love with Daan Ludik at first sight. It’s kind of set up for a sequel already and, as I said earlier, it’ll just take some exposure to catapult this series into the top ten shows on Netflix. Go now, my pretties, and tell everyone you know about this delicious televisual feast. Daan’s life as a lead character in a hit television show, and mine as his Number One Groupie, depends on it…
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv
Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thirteen-Stops-Later-Book-ebook/dp/B091J75WNB/
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