After watching Ordinary People, I can honestly say, the title of this series is probably the biggest joke in the entire show because these people are NOT ordinary.... At all.
The series takes us into Mirage Estate, this beautiful, wealthy-looking Lagos neighbourhood where everybody seems to have their lives together. Nice houses, nice cars, nice clothes, friendly neighbours...
Then you start opening the doors and suddenly you realise everybody is hiding something..
The story follows several residents whose lives slowly begin to connect in ways you don't really expect. There are criminals, undercover intelligence officers, people running from their past, troubled marriages, fraud, abuse, murder and enough secrets to make you wonder how these people even sleep at night.
One of the main characters is Dare, played by Shawn Faqua, who moves into the estate looking like your regular tech guy.
Except... he isn't exactly your regular tech guy... He's a hacker who starts secretly monitoring the people around him, and as he digs deeper into their lives, he discovers that Mirage Estate is basically a collection of people who should probably never have been neighbours.
Then there's Tornado, played by Ramsey Nouah and honestly, Ramsey Nouah looked like he was having fun with this character..
Tornado is a former Niger Delta crime lord who is trying to live quietly with his wife after everything that happened in his past. But obviously, the past doesn't care that you've changed your address.
His storyline was probably the one I found most interesting because there's this constant feeling that something is about to go wrong and then you have Chidi Mokeme and Michelle Dede playing a couple whose marriage isn't exactly what it appears to be either.
That's basically the whole theme of Ordinary People.
Everybody has a mask...The problem is that the series keeps adding more masks... And more... And more... At some point I was like, “Guy, can we just finish ONE problem before introducing another one?” .. That's probably my biggest issue with the show.
There is genuinely a lot happening.
You have Tornado's past.
Dare's investigation.
Undercover operations.
Domestic abuse.
Fraud.
Mental health struggles.
Murder.
Illegal abortion.
Family problems and several other secrets floating around the estate.
Individually, some of these stories are actually very interesting. The problem is that Ordinary People sometimes tries to carry all of them at once and because of that, some characters don't get enough room to breathe.
The cast, though, is stacked.... Ramsey Nouah, Chidi Mokeme, Adunni Ade, Sharon Ooja, Uche Montana, Michelle Dede, Lasisi Elenu, Jackie Appiah and the rest of the cast give the series that big Nollywood feel.
There were definitely performances I enjoyed more than others, but overall, I liked the fact that the show didn't feel like it was depending on just one person to carry everything and visually, I have to give them credit.
The production looks good... The estate actually feels like an expensive Lagos neighbourhood, and the action sequences have some ambition behind them. The series was filmed across Lagos, Bayelsa and Berlin, which also gives it a bigger scale than your average Nigerian TV production.
But the writing? Sometimes the show tells you things that I think would have been more interesting if we discovered them ourselves.
Instead of letting a character's actions make you suspicious, the narration or dialogue sometimes basically says, “Hey, just so you know, this person is hiding something.”
Bro, let me investigate too.
That's what makes the series frustrating because the idea is actually very good.
A wealthy estate full of seemingly respectable people who are all hiding dark secrets?... That's a fantastic setup for a thriller and there are moments when Ordinary People really delivers.
Then it gets too busy again.
Still, I can't say I was bored.
There was always something happening, somebody lying, somebody investigating somebody else or another secret waiting to come out and that kept me watching.
I think Ordinary People is one of those series where you'll probably enjoy the conversation around it almost as much as the actual show because after some episodes, you'll definitely want to ask somebody... “Wait... so you think THIS person did THAT?”
I think Ordinary People had the ingredients for something really special. Great cast, interesting setting, crime, mystery, secrets and enough drama to keep things moving.
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