Daddies Series Overview

A SEAN MONGIE RECIPE

FATHERHOOD HAS NO COOKBOOK

OVERVIEW

FORMAT

8 x Half-hour Dramedy

LANGUAGES

English, Afrikaans, Venda, Zulu

REFERENCES

The Bear, Ted Lasso, Modern Family, This is Us

CONTROLLING IDEA

The currency of fatherhood isn't money. It's time.

When a disgraced workaholic baker loses his bakery and marriage, he must rebuild a relationship with his daughter by running a pop-up bakery with other unconventional dads, including his absent father.

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TONE & FEEL

A dramedy that feels like comfort food: funny, angsty, hungry and a little thirsty. Grounded, naturalistic cinematography, lighting and production design transport us into the messy, lived‑in streets of Melville, Johannesburg.

01 / 20

SYNOPSIS

NICK fucked up. His marriage is toast, his Melville bakery is kaput and his nine-year-old daughter, SCOTTY, is caught in the wreckage.

For the record, he didn’t sleep with his business partner, VIVIENNE. Not that his ex-wife, JOAN, or their ex-couple’s therapist care. Nick left the bakery to save his marriage. Just too late.

Unemployed and living with CLINT, the father who abandoned him, Nick is processing intergenerational daddy issues. As he plays dad again with his fantasy-obsessed daughter, Nick secretly misses being a baker.

When Joan asks him to cater Scotty’s birthday party, Nick enters the humiliating world of kids’ catering, where nobody cares about his fusion-food genius. To add insult to injury, BRIAN arrives: a finance guy with a vape, a portfolio. And Joan. Brian’s everything Nick isn’t. Boring. Present. Liquid.

Spurred on by FRANCOIS, Nick’s troublemaker best friend, they catch the eye of investor KARABO. Together the trio turn Nick’s return to simpler food into a pop-up bakery run by dads. Including unlikely trainee, Clint. Nick’s got his shot at redemption.

Unfortunately, the dads cook better than they communicate. Francois and Karabo speed-run dating while managing the business, rushing Francois from situationship to working-stepdad to Karabo’s teenagers. Meanwhile, Clint, an old dog learning new baking tricks from his prodigal son, is shepherded towards parenthood again with his younger girlfriend, CLARISSA.

But what starts as pop-up catering becomes all-consuming. Nick breaks promises and rebuilds the bakery that destroyed his marriage. Joan warns that if he can’t put Scotty first, she’ll seek full custody.

Nick must choose between breadwinning and caregiving, and rediscover that the story of a family is written in the meals they eat together. His marriage may be over, but his daughter’s life is just beginning.

DADDIES CHARACTERS

DADDIES WORLD OF STORY