When Showmax shut down on April 30, 2026, the immediate question was what would happen to the ambitious original series the platform had commissioned. Two answers have now emerged, and they are instructive. Spinners — the Cape Town drag-racing drama that became the first African series ever selected in competition at Canneseries — is getting a second season. Reyka — the psychological thriller starring Kim Engelbrecht and Iain Glen — is also returning for a second season, set against the backdrop of Durban Harbour, the largest port in Africa. Both are former Showmax Originals. Both are now coming to Canal+ and MultiChoice platforms. And both have been explicitly positioned for global export.
This is the clearest available window into Canal+’s actual strategy for African content following the Showmax shutdown. The narrative around the shutdown has been one of contraction and loss — the closure of the continent’s most significant commissioner of African originals, the centralisation of commissioning through Paris, the fear among producers about what work will be available. All of that is real. But the survival and continuation of Spinners and Reyka reveals the other half of the strategy: Canal+ is not abandoning high-end African drama. It is selecting which high-end African drama to back, and backing it for the global market rather than the African streaming market.
The StudioCanal Export Logic
Canal+ has stated that it aims to boost high-end African productions like Shaka iLembe and Spinners and export them globally through StudioCanal — the group’s international distribution and production arm, one of Europe’s largest. This is a fundamentally different model from the one Showmax operated. Showmax commissioned African content primarily for African audiences on an African streaming platform. Canal+ is positioning the best African content for international distribution through a European major.
The implications cut both ways. On the positive side, StudioCanal export gives the strongest African series a path to global audiences and global revenue that Showmax, as an Africa-focused platform, could never provide. Spinners at Canneseries, Reyka with its international co-lead in Iain Glen — these are series built with international reach in mind, and StudioCanal is the infrastructure to deliver that reach. For the African productions that fit the export model, the Canal+ era could mean larger budgets and wider audiences than Showmax offered.
On the concerning side, the export logic selects for a specific kind of African content — the kind that travels internationally — and implicitly deprioritises the kind that serves African audiences specifically. The Khaki Fevers of the industry, the raunchy local comedies and the culturally specific dramas that worked for African audiences without international ambitions, do not fit the StudioCanal export model. The danger RollCallAfrica has named before remains: that the Canal+ strategy produces a small number of internationally exportable prestige series while abandoning the broad base of locally specific content that served the African audience directly.
What to Watch
Spinners Season 2 and Reyka Season 2 are the test cases. If they succeed internationally through StudioCanal — if the export model delivers the budgets and audiences it promises — Canal+ will have demonstrated a viable path for high-end African drama that Showmax never achieved commercially. If the export focus comes at the cost of the locally specific content that built African television’s relationship with its own audience, the industry will have traded a broad base for a narrow peak. Both outcomes are possible. The second seasons of these two series will be the early evidence of which one is arriving.
— Lerato Dlamini. RollCallAfrica, Johannesburg. 29 June 2026. Sources: Daily Nation (April 2026 — Canal+ Africa strategy), Variety (March 2026 — Showmax shutdown, Spinners), TV Mzansi (February 2026 — Spinners/Reyka season confirmations), Canal+ official.
