Written By: Gbawo Contributor, Moyosore
Like many Nigerian children, my house was resplendent with shelves and boxes overflowing DVD copies of Nollywood entertainment. For those of you who are not familiar, Nollywood is Nigeria’s version of Hollywood in America and Bollywood in India. It is a huge and lucrative industry, churning out numerous movies and tv shows and capitulating many an actor to stardom in the blink of an eye.
Now, one thing I love about Nigerians, especially us of the Yoruba persuasion, is that we are DRAMATIC. Think “soccer player falling down in a world cup match due to a very minor injury” level of dramatic. Then quadruple it. But despite my love for the dramatic, the Nollywood movies and shows sometimes did not resonate with my personal perspective because I could not always relate to some of the plotlines.
This wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of my parents who were literally always watching Naija movies and shows. And then with the advent of the YouTube age, it was like they were watching these movies and shows 24/7. But though I found them compelling, I personally just couldn’t relate to most of the programs they were watching. Then…like a beacon in the night, Amazon Prime Video delivered unto me: Riches.
Riches, from the creative mind of writer and executive producer Abby Ajayi (some, emphasis on some, of Ajayi’s writing credits include: Eastenders, Hollyoaks, & How to Get Away with Murder) is a DRAMATIC series centered around the Richards family and the beauty empire created in England, formerly under the control and ownership of the recently deceased patriarch of the family, Stephen Richards (Hugh Anthony Quarshie). Don’t worry, this isn’t a huge spoiler as Papa Richards dies pretty early on in the first episode. However, his death becomes the cataclysmic event, bringing together all five of his children from his first and second marriages.
For the eldest son and daughter, Nina (Deborah Olayinka Ayorinde) and Simon Richards (Emmanuel Imani), their return to England and subsequent decision to stay abroad has nothing to do with an attempt to resolve feelings towards a man who, for the two of them, was an absentee parent. Instead, becoming based in England for the two, particularly Nina, is rooted in realizing that their father left them in charge of his beauty empire and that Nina is to be the new CEO. This shift in power at the company becomes an early source of tension between Nina and Simon and their father’s second wife, Claudia (Sarah Niles), and their three half-siblings, Alesha (Adeyinka Akinrinade), Gus (Ola Orebiyi), and Wanda (Nneka Okoye).
All of the above would be a good enough foundation for binge-worthy tv show. But what really sucked me into the world of Riches was that EVERYTHING about the show is dripping in Naija’s finest. From the occasional slip into speaking Yoruba, to the family dynamics, to the subtle way respect for elders in a Nigerian family is perfectly reflected, to the sheer brilliance and vibrancy of the wardrobe and makeup choices, I felt like I was at a family reunion.
Now sure, I’ve never had family members directly scheming to remove me from a CEO position (at least not yet lol), but there was still something very familiar in the way the characters, particularly the two sets of siblings related to each other. Especially for Nina and Simon who grew up with the knowledge that their father left them to start the second act of his life, there was an unspoken closeness between the brother and sister duo and I must credit the actors, Ayorinde and Imani, for flawlessly capturing what it looks like when siblings, out of necessity or survival, need to create an island for themselves.
This is something my sisters and I always talk about as it relates to the three of us. We were our own unit as children, always together to the point that it was a frequent litany in our house to hear our three names lumped together like one long vowel filled sentence. As children of the diaspora, my sisters and I didn’t have the privilege of growing up around our extended family, or even around many other Nigerians. The degree to which we had to rely on each other because of that loss, was something we each understood early, even if we were unable to articulate why. That is what I felt from watching Nina and Simon.
The other aspect of the show that I know will resonate with many first-generation Nigerian children living abroad is the almost obsessive way Nina strives to prove that she is more than capable of running her father’s business. Even when we meet Nina in the first episode, we as the audience can immediately tell she is an incredibly successful and driven young woman who has made a name for herself. But as we see Nina dive into a role that clearly she was born to play, it raises the question as to where this drive comes from and whether she is almost trying to show her deceased father how even in his absence, she still developed all the skills necessary to be the HBIC (if you know, you know).
Nina struggles with something I think all children of the diaspora can relate to because whether it be conscious or unconscious, we each find ourselves hoping many times throughout our lives, usually at times of success, that all we’ve done is proof for our parents that they didn’t make a mistake in leaving their home country and gambling on what our futures could be. It doesn’t matter how old we get or whether we live close to our parents or not, that thought is always there.
What I also love about the show is that none of the five Richards children ever try to deny that they are Nigerian. From the way they address their respective mothers and aunties and uncles to the way they all talk while flourishing their hands, it is easy to tell, at least to fellow Nigerians, in what culture they were raised. They are Naija to the core.
Riches gave me what has proven quite elusive my entire life: an authentic portrayal of what it’s like to be first generation Nigerian living abroad. And I would just like to say any of the Amazon Prime Video executives who may stumble across this writing, please, I beg o, GIVE US MORE SEASONS.