About Adulting
Adulting is a South African comedy-drama from Tshedza Pictures that premiered on Showmax in March 2023, with a warm and unhurried look at four friends navigating the messy business of being grown men in Johannesburg. Bonga, Mpho, Eric, and Vuyani have known one another since their younger days, and the series catches up with them in their thirties, an age when the milestones that once felt distant, namely marriage, money, fatherhood, and a clear sense of purpose, have either arrived in complicated forms or stubbornly refused to show up at all. What holds the group together through all of it is a brotherhood that is funny, loyal, and quietly tender.
Each man carries a different version of the same question, which is what a successful adult life is supposed to look like. Bonga, the steady businessman of the group, is often the one offering level-headed advice and gentle pressure, the pillar his friends lean on even when his own life is far from settled. Mpho is the family man whose marriage and fatherhood test how honest he is willing to be with himself, while Eric is the hot-tempered live-wire whose bravado masks deeper wounds, and Vuyani is the charmer still working out what he wants. The show lets these men be vain, generous, foolish, and self-aware, sometimes all in a single conversation.
Rather than chase melodrama, Adulting leans into the small triumphs and ordinary setbacks of midlife friendship, the kind of stories told over drinks and group chats. It treats love, ambition, and the fear of falling behind with humour and a generous heart, and across three seasons it widens its circle of partners, family, and rivals while keeping the bond between the four men at its centre. Praised for putting Black South African male friendship on screen with affection and candour, the series ran on Showmax through April 2025 and became one of the platform's signature local comedy-dramas.
