In-Between: Representation, Liminality, and the Multiverse in Charlie Jade

Canadian/South African co-production Charlie Jade (syndicated, 2005) featured private detective Charlie Jade (American actor Jeffery Pierce) from the polluted, severely unequal “Cape City” crossing over to two other alternate universe/multiverse iterations of Cape Town, South Africa. Termed “Alpha,” “Beta,” and “Gamma,” the Betaverse is a fictionalised version of Cape Town with the Gammaverse being an idyllic, non-industrialised paradise. This article will analyse the negotiations between industrial requirements of international co-productions, contextualised in both the contexts of postcolonial media and postcolonial crime fiction, as well as negotiations of national/urban identity/-ties as expressed through the different iterations of Cape Town and the various characters.