Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Mandla N, Johnny Barbuzano, and Jonathan “Jono” Hall, Netflix’s ‘Umthetho‘ begins with Mbali, a public prosecutor, discovering that her presumed-dead brother, Moses, is actually alive and incarcerated. Having first been arrested more than a decade ago, Moses has a history of moving in and out of prison, but that changed when he landed in the infamous correctional facility known as The Palace. Under the leadership of Warden Agnez Khoza, the inmates are subjected to brutal suppression, and, pushed to his limit, Moses creates a prison group to fight for change. This faction, named the Gaz’Lam, quickly emerges as a powerful entity within The Palace, and as Mbali gets pulled into this saga as well, the proverbial cycle promises to only expand, and not shrink.
The Palace is a Fictional Prison Referencing the Iconic Setting From Brotherhood
The Palace is a fictional correctional facility created by writers Jose Domingos, Rami Nhlapo, Boitumelo Masemola, and Makanaka Mavengere. Given that the show itself is an adaptation of the crime series ‘Brotherhood,’ it is likely that The Palace is based on its Brazilian counterpart, the Colonel Roberto Tibirica Penitentiary, better known as the “mousetrap.” The fact that the name seems like the exact opposite of The Palace is likely an intentional choice on the creators’ part, as it conveys, without too many words, the shady nature of the prison system in ‘Umthetho.’ Far from living up to its name, the prison bears witness to several abusive practices directed towards prisoners, and escaping that ultimately becomes the driving force of the narrative.
While the writing team of ‘Umthetho’ has not pointed towards any real-life South African prison as their reference point, looking into the prison in ‘Brotherhood’ tells a different story. As many viewers have noted the similarity between the Brotherhood faction and the real-life crime syndicate known as the First Command of the Capital, or simply the PCC, a loose parallel can be drawn to reality. As per reports, the PCC was founded by eight prisoners at the Casa de Custódia de Taubaté, a prison in Taubaté, São Paulo state, on August 31, 1993. The creators of ‘Brotherhood’ have maintained that the crime faction within the narrative is not based on the PCC, but it is possible that Taubaté Prison served as a reference point during the creation of the Colonel Roberto Tibirica Penitentiary.
Although The Palace draws much of its DNA from the prison complex depicted in ‘Brotherhood,’ its sense of realism can be found in the finer, practical details. The creators have confirmed that The Palace was filmed in a real, functioning prison, but apart from that, no information about the specific location has been made public as of writing. Filming inside a real prison came with its own set of challenges, and in a conversation with The Mail & Guardian, actor Tony Kgoroge highlighted some of them. “Those benches are steel. So any mistake, whether you fall or you hit [something], you will hit the thing by mistake. It’s just prone to injury,” he elaborated. All of these details give The Palace an air of authencity, which goes a long way in assisting the show’s larger sociopolitical and thematic inquiries.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Umthetho Based on a True Story?
