Envision Entertainment Developing South African Action Comedy

Envision Entertainment has teamed with South African production company Scene23 to develop Tighthead, an action-comedy crime procedural.

Tighthead revolves around an unlikely crime-fighting duo made up of a white former Springbok rugby star-turned-shady fixer and a mixed-race junior policeman who has sharp deductive reasoning but terrible social skills. They must come together to clear their names after being implicated in a murder they did not commit.

South African author and screenwriter Fred Strydom (The Raft, The Inside Out Man) is writing the series based on a format created by Envision founder Michael Nakan, with substantial input from Tim Theron, co-founder and creative director of Scene23. Nakan previously co-created the format for the Envision series Connected.

“South Africa is an incredibly diverse country: a mix of cultures, races and viewpoints,” said David Barron, global head of scripted at Envision. “Our ambition is to create an international crime franchise with a uniquely South African identity, wrapped in a fun and accessible package.”

“South Africa has many strengths; prominent among these are both our cultural diversity and a love of sport,” Theron said. “These two aspects have been intertwined for some of the biggest moments in the country’s history. Tighthead is an action comedy that will bring both elements together and take us right into the flashy, high stakes world with its gritty underbelly, where local and global sports interests meet. This enables us to tell a story relevant to both sport-loving South Africans and globally to international audiences.”