Five Netflix series to watch if you loved ‘Beauty in Black’
Well, well, well. Season three of Beauty in Black is here and ready to draw blood, and the Bellaries should be shaking. Oh, Tyler Perry, the creator you are! The man is not giving this family a second to breathe. Every room this time feels like a trap, and one wrong move could bring the whole mess crashing down.
Kimmie may wear the crown, but power in this family is a poisoned chalice with a designer price tag. Mallory hangs over the empire while the walls are cracking and the locks are coming off. Guess everyone wants the drama to keep coming.
The FBI raid has left damage behind. Jules, meanwhile, keeps digging into his son’s death, which is where things got, ooh, very ugly. Some truths are safer buried, and this family may be about to learn that the hard way.
Netflix has renewed season four, so this toxic little circus stays open. But if you like dramas where money ruins people and secrets keep ruining lives, these five Netflix shows should be next.
Five Netflix series to watch if you loved Beauty in Black:
Savage Beauty (2022-)
If the Bellaries are your favourite flavour of rich-family dysfunction, Savage Beauty should be the first thing on your watchlist, because this South African drama also plants a woman inside a powerful beauty dynasty and then gives her every reason to burn the place down from within. Rosemary Zimu plays Zinhle, whose family was devastated by the Bhengus years earlier, so she infiltrates their cosmetics empire with revenge very much on the menu.
Creator Lebogang Mogashoa makes the Bhengu world look expensive enough to sell perfume, right up until the family starts rivening, which is where things get delicious. But wait, does that sound familiar? So, if Beauty in Black had you hooked on the Bellaries’ beauty-business warfare, this is practically the same thing in a South African flavour, and with only two seasons to get through, you can be casual, as no commitment is involved.
The Surrogacy (2023)
Right, a bit of context before this all goes completely off the road. The Surrogacy is set in Mexico in 2004, when commercial surrogacy had no legal footing there. Creator Aída Guajardo takes that gap and turns it into 24 episodes of people with money deciding, apparently, that rules are for somebody else.
Shaní Lozano plays Yeni, who is coerced into carrying a child for the Huizar family after they put her in a position where saving her imprisoned father leaves her with almost no choice. Then she gives birth and wakes up in a public square with a baby the family has rejected. Sorry, are you serious? And it gets worse. Yeni is pulled deeper into the Huizars’ world as the family tries to protect its name at her expense.
Fatal Seduction (2023-)
If you love Beauty in Black for all the adult mess, then Fatal Seduction makes things half clear just with its name. It starts with an affair, and very soon we have a dead best friend! The show follows university professor Nandi Mahlati, whose marriage to Leonard is already in a dreadful state when she starts to suspect he is cheating. A weekend away then leads her into an affair with the much younger Jacob. Messy enough, you would think. Except Brenda, her best friend, turns up dead. Right. So infidelity is now the least of Nandi’s problems.
And fun fact – this South African thriller is based on Netflix’s Mexican hit Dark Desire, with the story moved to Cape Town and rebuilt around new characters. The series has since grown across multiple seasons and has also been sprinkled with a dash of political power, which has enhanced the flavour because when has adultery and murder been enough for Netflix?
Blood & Water (2020-2024)
Now forget boardrooms and beauty empires for a minute. Blood & Water takes the trouble out of the boardroom and drops it into Parkhurst College, where Puleng Khumalo becomes convinced that star swimmer Fikile Bhele may be the sister stolen from her family at birth. What happens next? She starts searching. She even transfers to the school for a mystery that nobody seems keen to have dragged into the light. This is school, not a police investigation.
And this is where Beauty in Black fans should pay attention, because Parkhurst has the same obsession with status and family reputation, except the people guarding those secrets are sitting exams. Puleng keeps digging, to the point you are worried about her discovering some forbidden secrets. What a nightmare!
Unseen (2023-2025)
And then there is Unseen, which leaves the mansions behind and follows Zenzi Mwale, a Cape Town cleaner people don’t notice until they realise they have made a very bad mistake. Gail Mabalane plays Zenzi, who starts looking for her husband after he is released from prison, only to end up caught with violent criminals who think she is no threat.
Then one killing changes everything, and Zenzi is pulled into a world that had written her off from the start. Oh, and the fun part is, these people have no idea what they have started. Unseen was inspired by the Turkish thriller Fatma and comes from Gambit Films, the same company behind Blood & Water. Kimmie fans will spot the link straight away: another woman gets pushed too far, and suddenly everyone who ignored her has a serious problem.