Netflix’s ‘Members Only: Palm Beach’ Has South Africans Saying – Wait, That’s Hillcrest
By Lerato “Lulu” Khumalo | EZA News
A Netflix reality series set in the world of exclusive Palm Beach social circles has sparked an unexpected conversation among South African viewers – because, as anyone who has spent time in the leafy, manicured suburbia of Hillcrest in KwaZulu-Natal’s outer Durban will tell you, the dynamics on screen feel entirely, hilariously familiar.
Members Only: Palm Beach traffics in the social hierarchies, the real estate obsessions, the very particular performance of affluent leisure that characterises a certain kind of gated community existence. South African viewers are watching it and seeing their own postcodes reflected back at them – with American accents and slightly more dramatic weather.
The conversation this has sparked locally is worth paying attention to. It says something useful about how South African suburban culture – particularly in the well-heeled corridors of greater Durban – has developed its own version of the archetypes that these shows have long depicted from American settings. Hillcrest, it turns out, is universal. That is either very comforting or mildly alarming, depending on where you live.
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