Queen Sono: Netflix Original as postfeminist South African spy thriller

Abstract

This article explores Netflix’s changing business strategies to diversify its catalogues, examining the practices of ‘direct commissioning’ and genre adaptation. The case study of Queen Sono, the first Netflix African Original, reveals how the spy thriller conventions are leveraged to attract a Western audience even as the series is adapted to the African context. Although Queen is portrayed as a female spy with clear moral impulses, I argue that her agency is constrained by the male-dominated spy thriller conventions and the transnational postfeminist sensibility of the series which Netflix paradoxically needs to utilise to attract both African and transnational subscribers.