SOUTH AFRICA – Showmax has released a first trailer for Die Kantoor, its South African screen adaptation of the workplace mockumentary format “The Office,” positioning the series for a coordinated rollout across streaming and linear television in January 2026.
kykNET will preview the first episode at 20:00 on 18 January 2026, ahead of the Showmax premiere on 20 January 2026. New episodes will be released weekly on both platforms.
The series is set at Deluxe Processed Meats, a polony distributor, with Albert Pretorius starring as office manager Flip. The cast also includes Schalk Bezuidenhout, Lida Botha, Carl Beukes, Ilse Oppelt, Daniah de Villiers, Mehboob Bawa, Sipumziwe Lucwaba, and Gert du Plessis.
The release strategy matters beyond the trailer itself: simultaneous weekly scheduling across a streamer and a traditional channel reflects how South African commissioners are increasingly treating local scripted comedy as a cross-platform asset, built to serve both on-demand discovery and appointment viewing. It also dovetails with a regulatory climate that favours sustained investment in domestic stories, as streaming and pay-TV operators respond to local-content expectations embedded in South Africa’s Electronic Communications Act and overseen by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.
A familiar format, rebuilt around a local workplace
The trailer marks the first public look at Pretorius in the manager role at the centre of the mockumentary structure – a position that, in earlier international versions, anchored the show’s tension between office hierarchy and the documentary crew’s fixed gaze.
Here, that gaze lands in industrial Klerksdorp, inside Deluxe Processed Meats, rather than a suburban paper supplier. The choice of a lower-status meat product, in a country where premium cuts carry cultural weight around the braai, gives the adaptation an immediately local metaphor for status anxiety and class within the workplace.
Pretorius described Flip as a character who actively embraces the idea of being filmed:
“Flip thinks of himself as the Rassie Erasmus of polony; in his mind, the documentary crew is making his Chasing the Sun, about how he’s taking this team to the next level,” Pretorius said of his character, in a press release.
In another statement, Pretorius said his initial reaction to the material was immediate and cautious. “I was sent one monologue first, without context, and my immediate reaction was: ‘We cannot say any of this,'” he said, adding later: “When I read the full scripts, I realised there’s a lot of idiocy, but there’s also a lot of heart and relatability,” he added.
Pretorius also recalled an on-set message to the ensemble about separating character from performer: “There’s some inappropriate stuff. On the first day, Bennie [Fourie] actually said to the cast and crew, ‘Listen, Flip has no filter, but Albert is the sweetest man. Whatever comes out of his mouth over the next seven weeks, don’t be offended.'”
That framing – a deliberately abrasive fictional manager, shielded by a clear boundary between performance and personal views – is increasingly standard for local comedy that must satisfy both audience taste and platform rules around harmful speech.
Cast and roles: the production’s first disclosed ensemble
Showmax’s trailer launch also clarifies the on-screen lineup for the first season, with Pretorius positioned as the managerial focal point inside a distribution business.
- Albert Pretorius as Flip, office manager at Deluxe Processed Meats
- Schalk Bezuidenhout
- Lida Botha
- Carl Beukes
- Ilse Oppelt
- Daniah de Villiers
- Mehboob Bawa
- Sipumziwe Lucwaba
- Gert du Plessis
Behind the camera, the series continues MultiChoice’s strategy of pairing established local talent with a global format license. Head writer and director Bennie Fourie draws on a decade of work in Afrikaans mockumentary comedy, while production company Rapid Blue, part of BBC Studios, delivers the Showmax Original with BBC Studios handling global sales, reinforcing the title’s role as an exportable asset as well as a domestic draw.
Why weekly, dual-platform scheduling is the headline for the business
The creative pitch of a local “Office” adaptation is only part of the industrial decision-making around a title like this. The more revealing signal is the release architecture: a kykNET preview at a set time, followed by a Showmax launch two days later, then weekly drops across both.
For rights holders and platform operators, this kind of cadence typically serves several practical aims:
- Audience funneling: a linear preview can function as a high-reach sampler for viewers who may not begin their viewing inside an app, nudging DStv households toward adding Showmax to their bundle rather than treating it as a stand‑alone discretionary spend.
- Retention mechanics: weekly episodes encourage subscribers to keep a service active longer than an all-at-once drop, a consideration that has become central to streaming business models under pressure from higher content spend and slower subscriber growth.
- Unified marketing windows: one week-to-week conversation across two outlets simplifies campaign planning and paid-media flighting, while giving advertisers and sponsors – where carried – clearer touchpoints.
- Audience measurement clarity: a scheduled release pattern can be easier to evaluate than a full-season binge, particularly when multiple platforms are involved and internal data must be reconciled with panel-based TV ratings.
Those goals can be pursued without relying on claims about performance. What is verifiable now is the distribution timetable and the decision to align the series simultaneously across streaming and a linear channel on a weekly schedule – a pattern consistent with how global rights holders, including BBC Studios, are increasingly structuring format rollouts in mixed streaming-broadcast markets.
Where the remake sits inside the “The Office” franchise
“The Office” was originally created by British comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The mockumentary comedy series was later adapted for a US version, starring Steve Carell, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson and Jenna Fischer.
For producers and platforms, the enduring value of the format has historically been tied to its adaptability: the core premise – an office observed by a documentary crew – can be placed into different labour cultures, management styles, and social norms without changing the underlying mechanics of the show. South Africa’s version, largely in Afrikaans and built around a BBBEE-era company bought into by a Black economic empowerment consortium, sits squarely within that tradition of using the format to explore local corporate tensions without abandoning the universal beats of workplace satire.
In this version, that workplace is Deluxe Processed Meats, which frames the office comedy around a processed-meat distribution setting rather than a paper company. The trailer release makes clear that the production is using the documentary device – and the manager’s desire to perform for the camera – as a central engine for character and plot, while the chosen industry gives writers a way to comment obliquely on food safety scares, status goods and South Africa’s own debates over workplace transformation.
The key operational fact is that the South African adaptation is being introduced as a Showmax title with kykNET carriage, and that its rollout begins with a preview at 20:00 on 18 January 2026, followed by the Showmax premiere on 20 January 2026, with weekly episode releases on both platforms. In a pay-TV and streaming ecosystem now shaped by the MultiChoice-Canal+ consolidation, a franchise as recognisable as “The Office” becomes not just a comedy bet but a signalling device: that the combined group intends to keep investing in high-profile local IP even as competition for South African viewers, regulators’ scrutiny of local content levels, and household budgets all tighten.
