LOGLINE:
When an American DJ gets exposed for promising a charity school in Africa that never materialized, EDM hitmaker Eric Bowers travels to the vibrant city of Johannesburg, South Africa for damage control – but what starts as a PR stunt becomes a reckoning with the music he's been making, the culture he's been faking, and an African identity he never knew he had…
the world:
Our series beyond the pilot will live predominately in Africa – Johannesburg to start. But this isn’t the Africa you've often seen on TV. This is the real thing – messy, contradictory, thriving, struggling, loud as hell, and unapologetically itself.
Eric arrives with this Instagram-filtered idea of what Africa is, what Blackness means, who he is. Africa strips all that away. Johannesburg becomes a character in our series – beautiful, spiritual, cynical, traditional and hypermodern, always moving, always breathing.
Eric’s disconnect to the diaspora is the heart of the comedy and the reality. We're exploring what happens when an African American finally confronts the distance between him and his ancestral roots, realizing that being Black in America and being African are equally related as much as it’s vastly different.
Bridging that gap is where the show lives.
The tone:
JET LAG has the familiar comedy and hijinks of American classics, but like the title suggests, explores a unique tonal disorientation similar to Lost in Translation, only set within the fresh and ever-changing African diaspora. The real humor of Jet Lag is found in its authenticity, or in Eric’s case – the lack thereof. We laugh at his ignorance, his privilege, his assumptions. But it's always rooted in love. Eric's disconnect from his roots is a wound, not just a punchline. We're laughing with him as he learns, not at him for not knowing.
Well, maybe a little…
In a way, our show could be tonal cousins with Ted Lasso, if Ted had rhythm, melanin, and a cocaine addiction.
A completely different pulse, but the synergy between them lies in the heart, as this is a show about finding yourself amongst flawed people who are lost in their own way. A show about African culture that's equally about Black American culture and the beautiful, painful space where they meet. Our series is loud – the parties, family arguments, Joburg street energy — and it’s devastatingly quiet when Eric stops “performing” and starts feeling.
There’s a reason why over 2 billion people listen to EDM, and Afrobeats’ value has grown over 500% in just the last few years. Audiences have proven a desire into both worlds, and for the first time on television, we’re infusing both. We’re offering real, unfiltered access to how Afrobeats and EDM are actually made, performed, and lived.
Our Pilot opens at the Vegas Sphere where Eric brings thousands of fans into a trance, then we’ll find ourselves inside the historic Constitution Hill in Johannesburg where a frenetic Afrobeats party is happening.
The MUSIC:
But unlike Eric, we’re not using Africa for the plot. Through our journey we’ll meet and highlight real African artists and DJ’s – showing the diversity within the African music scene. By the end of season one alone, audiences will have discovered artists they've never heard on American radio.
But we’ll also see the spiritual side. Music in Africa is a connection to the ancestors, to community, to something bigger. We're showing the rituals before performances, the prayers, the way musicians become vessels for something larger than themselves. The underground clubs where people dance until sunrise. The street performances where kids with nothing create everything. The family parties where everyone from the grandmother to the toddler has rhythm in their blood. We're showing how music was resistance during apartheid, how it's healing now, how it carries culture when everything else gets stripped away.
SEE THE MUSIC:
The power of music will live through our characters to show that – whether Afrobeats or EDM, American or African culture, it’s all connected through love and humanity, transcending color, politics and race… And frankly, we just need a reason to smile more.
CHARACTER BREAKDOWNS
●
CHARACTER BREAKDOWNS ●
Eric is a successful American EDM DJ who built an empire on African inspired sounds without ever asking where those beats came from or what they meant. He's charming, talented, but often buries his anxieties and fears into drugs and fun. Raised in suburban Connecticut by parents who "didn't see color," Eric's Blackness has always been a brand, never an identity. His journey is about stripping all that away and discovering who he actually is when nobody's watching.
ERIC BOWERS (30S)
DJ/LEAD
Swedish. Beautiful. Always slightly high. Cara is the human embodiment of enabling wrapped in expensive yoga pants and complicated intentions. She graduated from DJ groupie to girlfriend, treating their relationship like a fun adventure. Cara represents everything Eric needs to leave behind: the performance of a life rather than the actual living of it.
CARA (Late 20s)
GIRLFRIEND AND ENABLER
LANCE ByerS (40s)
PRIVILEGED MANAGER
Yale grad. Hamptons kid. Stumbled into music management because his dad knew someone. Lance sees Eric as a product, not a person, and genuinely doesn't understand why that's a problem.
Smart enough to run the entire industry. Exhausted from trying. Blean is a do-it-all publicist who's been saving Eric from himself since day one. She manages his image, writes his posts, books his press, cleans up his messes. Ethiopian-American, first-generation, yet fluent in both worlds in a way Eric has never been. Sharp, funny, frustrated, and done with Eric's refusal to engage with his own culture.
BLEAN TAYE (mid-20s)
DO-IT-ALL PUBLICIST
THE AFRICA CREW
●
THE AFRICA CREW ●
NOEL (mid-30s)
SOUTH AFRICAN COUSIN
Eric's white- South African cousin. Funny, warm, ambitious, connected, but slightly shady in that lovable entrepreneur way. Been managing local artists for years, including Lollipop. Sees Eric's arrival as both family obligation and business opportunity.
Joburg legend. Lived through apartheid, democracy, prosperity, disappointment. Junior knows everyone in Johannesburg. Has seen everything twice. He loves sharing his African culture with the world, especially American tourists, so he can use his endearing jokes and puns. Junior becomes Eric's guide through epic drives across the city, introducing him to food, music, history, family – all with the warming affection Eric desperately needs.
JUNIOR (60s)
DRIVER, SECURITY, AND BEYOND…
ALIKA (30s)
ACTIVIST AND HIDDEN ARTIST
Nigerian. Fierce. Community organizer and cultural preservationist, Alika is rooted, principled, unshakeable in her identity. She's also an incredibly talented singer but refuses to show her art beyond her friends, convinced that success outside means betrayal inside. She represents the African side of the diaspora divide: tired of being romanticized and commodified by Black Americans, but discovering through her budding relationship with Eric that building bridges is more powerful than building walls.
Real name Lipelo. Soweto-born, self-taught DJ and producer. Makes pure, authentic Amapiano and Afro-beats without any American influence or compromise. Direct, intimidating, but surprisingly kind once you earn her respect. Managed by Noel, Lollipop’s relationship with the local music scene opens up the series to showcase real South African talent and culture.
LOLLIPOP (20s)
LOCAL DJ (NOEL'S CLIENT)
SEASON ONE ARC
●
SEASON ONE ARC ●
Season one is comprised of eight half-hour episodes. The first two episodes are available to read, which sends Eric to South Africa for quick PR damage control, but he realizes things are far worse than he imagined with the school he promised to deliver. Hoping to rectify his crumbling image through fabricated label parties and briberies that backfire gloriously, Eric's life gets even more complicated when the drunk disaster of his DJ battle against Lollipop blows up the internet. What started as a weekend PR stunt becomes the start of Eric’s profound transformation, cultural education, and painful reckoning – as he's forced to extend his stay in Africa to clear his image ahead of his first headlining international tour.
The season tracks Eric learning to listen instead of perform while navigating family dynamics he's never experienced (Blean, Noel and Junior become his unexpected anchors) and discovering real connection with Alika, who challenges everything he thought he knew about himself and love. Although painful and humorous, Eric begins to understand what it actually means to be part of the African diaspora. The music evolves with him – each episode moves Eric further from his soulless EDM fusion toward something more authentic, more collaborative, more vulnerable. By season's end, Eric hasn't "figured it out", but like me, he's finally asking the right questions…
