Far From Home Movie On Netflix, Where A Working Class Artist Lands At One Of Nigera’s Top High Schools
Netflix has gotten into the Nollywood business — Nigeria’s film and TV industry — in a big way in the last couple of years. Its latest series is a YA drama that takes place at one of the country’s elite private schools. Yes, that seems like a pretty common plot lately. Will the series really examine issues about the country’s class differences or will it be just another soapy YA drama?
FAR FROM HOME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A car pulls up to a swanky art opening. Ishaya Bello (Mike Afolarin), who is featured, gets out. Then Ishaya wakes up; he’s at his parents’ house in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria.
The Gist: Ishaya isn’t in school; in fact, he works three different jobs in order to save up to attend a London fellowship of a well-known artist. His parents Ishaya Sr. (Paul Adams) and Patricia (Funke Akindele) want him to ditch his artist dreams and concentrate on school. His sister Rahilia (Tomi Ojo) sees an ad for an open application period for the prestigious Wilmer School, where a scholarship is being offered. He offers to go with her, but she doesn’t even apply when she finds out she can’t afford the application fee.
After his family dips into his savings to help one of his father’s many health issues, Ishaya gets desperate. At one of Patricia’s wealthy cleaning clients’ home, he overhears a dad tell is son Denrele (Raymond Umenze) that he has the answer key to the Wilmer entrance exam, and that the scholarship comes with a $10,000 reward (worth about 6 million Nigerian Naira). When Denrele, who insists he can get in on his own, throws out the answer key, Ishaya picks it up and hatches a plan: He’ll ace the test, get the scholarship, and once he gets the $10,000, he goes to London.
But he needs the application fee first; he decides to steal it from the “money cage” of another boss: club owner Government (Bucci Franklin), even after he sees Government and his right-hand man, Oga Rambo (Bolanle Ninalowo), kill someone for “getting high on our supply” and feeding the dead man to a hungry hyena.
Once he gets in, he gets creative when it comes to getting a transcript and having it verified. And he immediately meets Carmen Wilmer-Willoughby (Elma Mbadiwe), a scion of the family that owns the school. Her boyfriend, an artist named Atlas (Olumide Oworu) acts like a complete jerk to a kid named Frank (Emeka Nwagbaraocha) and almost kills Carmen after he gets news he doesn’t like.
Ishaya immediately runs into problems: Denrele and his greedy dad get wind that he stole the answer key, and his grant turns out to be 10,000 naira (about $22) instead of dollars. Then Government and Rambo catch up with him for the money he stole, and they take Rahilia as collateral.
Our Take: After the first episode, we’re not sure where the show is going to go. Is it going to be about how Ishaya, who is at Wilmer under false pretenses, fits in with the elite of the elite? Is it about the trouble he got himself in to get there? Will we be following students like Carmen, who has a pain pill addiction after shattering her leg in an accident the year before, or will Ishaya be the focus?
We didn’t get a particularly clear view, as the first episode was basically trying to cover every aspect of the story. It does feel like we’re going to transition away from Ishaya’s life in the slums with his family, unless the threats that he has to deal affect his family, like what we saw with Government and Rambo. If we do go away from that and focus on the Wilmer School, it’ll likely feel very similar to other YA shows that take place at elite private schools, with similar overprivileged characters.
Even a small amount of Ishaya’s life back home, though, will make Far From Home stand out from other similar shows, as the relationship with his sister and parents, which was shaky to begin with, really seems to be crumbling as we end the first episode.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Ishaya’s parents demand he gets out of the house and find the money to pay Government. Government’s car pulls away from the apartment building where the Bellos live, presumabaly with Rahilia inside.
Sleeper Star: Gbubemi Ejeye as Ishaya’s girlfriend Adufe, who is so insulted by Ishaya’s plan to go to London, mainly because he never told her about it, she dumps him and starts to hang out with Oga Rambo.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Ishaya tells his mother he wants to go to London to draw, she yells to him, “The devil’s work!”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Even if Far From Home turns out to be more of a soapy YA drama and less of a treatise on Nigeria’s class differences, it should still be enjoyable enough to keep watching.
