True crime, true obsession

Docuseries 'Beauty and the Bester' asks tough questions about crime, psychology and South Africa's fascination with true crime

- Rolland Simpi Motaung

A quick online search for Thabo Bester and Dr Nandipha Magudumana paints an immediate and vivid picture — one that might leave you questioning the necessity for another documentary on them.

The court interdict launched by the pair a day before Netflix premiere of Beauty and the Bester last week, seeking to block it, fell face-flat.

In 2023, Thabo Bester was the most searched-for person in South Africa, with his co-accused, celebrity doctor Magudumana, taking fourth place. After all, what could Beauty and the Bester possibly offer that hasn't already been splashed across headlines, WhatsApp groups and court reports?

Part entertaining, part cautionary tale, the three-part docuseries' strength is the mirror it holds to our social psyche - disturbingly so.

Directed by Anthony Molyneaux, Beauty and the Bester delves into the events involving rape and murder that shook South Africa in late 2023.

It re-enforces the question that continues to baffle the public - How did one of South Africa's most admired women land at the centre of one of its biggest criminal scandals? And what led to this Bonnie and Clyde story traversing borders from South Africa to Tanzania by car and hope?

From the start, the haunting opening sequence scored by Siyabonga Sithole, Sean Ou Tim and Fezile Thula sets an eerie, captivating tone.

Despite the potentially confusing timelines, swinging between 2011 (Bester's original conviction) and 2022 (his escape), technically, the documentary is well crafted, as expected from the global streamer.

The voice notes, court documents, archival footage and new interviews in Beauty and the Bester didn't inspire me, though. It was Showmax's four-part series Tracking Thabo Bester, which premiered last year, that gave one all one needed to know about this jarring saga.

The new voices of friends, former clients and prisoner warders in