THE SMART MONEY WOMAN SEASON 1 REVIEW
Toni Tones, Lala Akindoju, Osas Ighodaro, Ini Dima-Okojie, Ebenezer Eno
Meet Zuri. She's living a fabulous life. Great car, gorgeous apartment, well paid job. Meet Zuri. Broken down car, an apartment she cant afford, a job she's about to lose. What's a broke girl to do. With her best friends Tami (the flighty fashion designer), Lara (the tough oil and gas executive), Adesuwa (the conservative lawyer), and Ladun (the fabulous housewife), Zuri grows a little, learns a lot and navigates her way to making better financial decisions and building wealth. This show tackles, debt, spending, the consumerist culture of the African middle class, the fear and misconceptions surrounding money and the lack of it, love, friendships, cultural and societal pressures and the roles they play in success. With each episode comes a Smart Money Lesson, there to help you work your way up the financial ladder.
7 episodes (~40 minutes each)
Bunmi Ajakaiye
Pearl Osibu & Jola Ayeye
2020
Netflix
I’m not entirely certain, but I suspect that I just spent my whole day binge watching Season 1 of “The Smart Money Woman”. And since I’ve watched it, let’s talk about it.
The Smart Money Woman follows five friends and their individual stories especially how they handle money and grow through it. We start out with Zuri (Osas Ighodaro) who finds herself suddenly single and suddenly broke. However, the argument here is that she has always been either broke or oscillating between nearly broke and actually broke. So she makes the decision to take her fate into her hands and make better money decisions.
Then there’s Adesuwa (Lala Akindoju) who is married to a leech of a husband yet for some unfortunate reason continues to share a joint account with him. An account, that he in turn uses to sponsor his sugar baby. We also have Tami (Ini Dima-Okojie), our resident trust fund kid. She is a self proclaimed fashion designer with a few celebrity clients yet her business never seems to turn a profit. But that’s okay because “daddy Davies” never ceases to run to the rescue. There’s also Lara (Toni Tones), the smartest looking of the group, who makes the tough decisions and calls it as it is. But even she is saddled with a family (brother, sister and mother) who she has been supporting since she was in university. Finally we have Ladun (Ebenezer Eno), who seemingly hit the Lagos jackpot by marrying into wealth right out of NYSC/university. She spends “her husband’s money” with reckless abandon even though she has never earned a dime a day. She seems to have no cares for finances until she is forced to along the way.
The beautiful thing is all these ladies are not a far stretch. If you’ve even opened your eyes once on Lagos streets, you’ve met at least once. So the original author, Arese Ugwu, isn’t hard pressed to find her target audience. The message of the series hits home, I just wish it didn’t feel the need to be quite as obviously preachy as it was. The narrations over the characters and the pauses to insert cliffnotes, make it start to seem like a lecture when the same could have been achieved by just telling the story. Take a movie like “The Big Short” as an example, it tells a story but most people left that cinema googling things about the stock market and how to enter it. Ironically, the things about “Smart Money Woman” that I personally looked into were not the things that were spelled out and double highlighted for me on the screens. Instead, they were things I saw in the series and I felt in my soul.
Speaking of feelings, a hats off to Jola Ayeye and Pearl Osibu for managing to weave the money messages into a series that keeps you coming back. When I say that I binged this, I truly mean it. Every second I spent away was a second my brain was begging to come back, and that pull is something many nollywood content of today haven’t quite managed.
The actors are fluid and easy to watch. A special mention to Lala Akindoju especially in the initial scene in episode one after she gets disrespected by her mother-in-law and you just watch as the tears start to well up in her eyes. It might seem simple because that’s how it would happen in real life, but now imagine it in a room full of cast and crew after your tenth take possibly. The fluidity is unquestionable.
Will you enjoy watching SMW? Absolutely. Is it without it’s flaws? Absolutely not.
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