Trompoppie is a 2023 Afrikaans thriller/ whodunnit series currently streaming on ShowMax. It is set in a prestigious – read wealthy – Cape Town high school where “trompoppies” – drum majorettes – are idolized. One critic notes that the series “gives a “Pretty Little Liars” meets “Mean Girls” feel.” I enjoyed the series, and I was fascinated by how it covered up quite glaring issues with its plot. Since the casting, acting, dialogue, and cinematography were exceptional, I figured that any issue with the story must be a fault of my own. I found the show to be a good example in how not to signify the larger universe around the events that constitute your created world.
All art – be it a text, a novel, a movie, a song, or a TikTok – should be reviewed for what it offers and not for what a critic wants to fault. Plot holes signify a dark opening beyond the realms of our understanding. If, while walking, you see a flying donkey, and your friend does not believe you, then claim that they are blinded by prejudice. Like plot holes, lack of belief should not easily be ascribed to poor writing. All writing – all creation – is constructive in a myriad of ways, most of which the poor writing god did not intend to signify.
Being a good reviewer involves kindness. Writing a good book review, for example, should not involve saying what a book lacks or what it does wrong. Reviewing is not finding faults but questioning the extent of the stories’ internal logic. This is what I do for Trompoppie.
Trompoppie revolves around Luna Verwey. She is a talented gymnast, and her mother has recently died. She and her father are now struggling, so Luna is on the lookout for any scholarship programs. One, in the form of Jill Peterson, comes and finds her.
Jill is the ideal Tannie character. She is an affluent actress on an Afrikaans TV soap-drama who everyone seems to know. She also has connections to the most exclusive trompoppie school program in South Africa. Jill offers to pay for Luna’s school fees, to house her, and to function as an adopted mom. All Luna needs to do is join the trompoppies.
Zanne, Jills daughter, invites Luna to a party to try and convince her. Here, she meets the other trompoppies. They ignore her because she is poor, but Luna knows no one else at the party. Before she knows it, a sack is placed over Luna’s head. She and the other trompoppies are taken to perform their initiation ritual on the school field.
The initiation involves lying in a coffin for a certain time while the girls around you chant your name. And it goes wrong. When Zanne, Luna’s one friend, goes inside the coffin, a light flashes across the field. The girls scatter and leave Zanne. When they return, she has suffocated. The girls decide to bury the coffin, with Zanne’s dead body, back in the middle of the school field. They make a pact to keep silent about their complicity.
I like this premise. Luna, the poor girl who just got her big break, is now complicit in the murder of the daughter of the woman who has made her dreams come true. She also must trust a group of teenage girls that she just met, who all are friends with each other, and who do not seem fond of her.
Luna sleeps at Jill’s house, as arranged, sneaking in without her noticing. When Jill questions Luna about where Zanne is the next morning, she says that she doesn’t know. Luna claims that Zanne wanted to go somewhere else. Jill appears sceptical but also does not question it. The story has no real time for her to question it because there are plot points to progress through. Luna’s dad was offered a work contract that’ll take him on a “Cargo Ship” for work. Jill and he have already agreed that Luna can stay with the Petersons for the next few months.
The show then takes the murders up a notch. One by one, the trompoppie’s begin to die in increasingly gruesome ways. It becomes clear that someone knows their secret and is out for revenge. Not only must the girls continue to lie about what happened to Zanne, but they are also being chased by a killer who is out for Zanne’s revenge.
The story also takes the nation by storm and a note reading “VirZanne” is found near the first murdered girl. It’s also a story about a group of rich teenage girls who are being targeted and murdered. #VirZanne starts trending across South Africa. Not only does social media take interest in the violence, but it also takes interested in playing detective. Through social media, the murders are shown to take on national importance.
Social media is also where we can see a rupture in the stories universe. It’s fair to assume that the series wrier Etienne Fourie uses social media to express sensation. People living in the South Africa of Trompoppie show their interest by engaging in media like Twitter. For one, they speculate on who the murderer might be. It highlights that there are characters within the universe, but outside of the immediate trompoppie circle, who have an interest in their world.
Everyone except Luna’s father.
He has little issue with leaving his daughter for many months with a woman whom he just met and whose daughter did not come home from a high school party the night before. Note that the day that he drops Luna off is the same day that the police are at the Peterson’s house to begin the missing person case. He does not see that his daughter is distressed. He does not notice that she is hiding something about the night of Zanne’s disappearance.
But this might just be a portrayal of poor fathering on his part.
What becomes difficult to reckon with is that he continues to appear unaware of the murders.
Now, as a lonely writer, I’ve never worked on a ‘Cargo Ship’ – for this is all the description of the father’s job – but I do imagine that they have access to the outside world. Even if one argued that Luna’s dad was aware but was too busy working to come home, then why does he not once ask Luna about it? The story claims that he is trying to phone her and that she is ignoring him. But, when we see his text messages to her, all we see is him asking to phone. Why not text about the killer?
We have a universe where a father appears unaware that his daughter is at the centre of gruesome murders. Yet, if we are to believe Twitter, then everyone in the country is interested. It’s like they’re all keeping it secret from him.
If you show the effect of a story onto the outside world, then you need to remember that people on the outside know people on the inside, and vice versa. It is a good thing that none of the characters had concerned aunts who would want them shipped to a rural area or cousins in New Zealand talking about how much safer it would be down there.
Blake Snyder was a relatively successful screenplay writer who found even more success by writing the book Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll ever Need. If you type “books on writing,” you’ll likely find it. He has a rule of not involving the media. Being serious now, how the media functions in Trompoppie is a good example of why.
To write well is to develop a clear universe around your words. When you begin pointing beyond it, towards other mediums, transplanting responsibilities of logic to something as fickle as social media, then you risk losing the power of plot in favour of frenzy. Your story does not become better if you say that Twitter likes it or that people are engaging with it there. It merely says that some others are interested.
People commenting from the sidelines is difficult to make interesting. Throwing various voices at the plot, and building intrigue because everyone else is interested, seems to be what Etienne Fourie intended. The people, like Luna’s father, who needed it most, did not access the story on social media. It added an uncoordinated mix of side characters whose only life was to be interested in the world of others. We viewers knew more of the plot than them, so their views were often unconstructive.
But truly the most fascinating element of the Trompoppie universe is the grass on the school field. As mentioned, Zanne suffocates in a coffin that the trompoppie’s bury in the centre of the school field. They even rebury Zanne here after she dies, right in the middle of the school field. Like Minecraft, the dirt turns green in a matter of minutes. There are zero traces that anything had been moved or displaced because surely the rich school portrayed would have a team of gardeners checking the field daily. And, surely, the police would have surveyed the school. And, surely, there would have been some kind of coffin-sized displayed tuft of grass had they existed in the real world.
Murder mysteries rely on logic to work. What they present is what the audience will latch on. So, when they present mistakes, you cannot blame the audience for following along.
I have no hard or bad feelings against Trompoppie. It was excellently shot, directed, cast, and acted. The internal logic might be beyond my grasp. During the review, I hid the fact that I watched the show with English subtitles. My misunderstanding of how grass grows could be the result of this.
Interested in more? Consider reading:
Kris Van der Bijl 
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