Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Òlòtūré: The Journey’ On Netflix, Where A Journalist Investigating Sex Trafficking Finds Herself Trying To Get Back To Nigeria

In 2020, Netflix streamed Òlòtūré, a Nigerian film made the year before; it involved a young and somewhat naive journalist who goes undercover as a sex worker to blow the lid off a trafficking ring. But by the end of the film, the reporter finds herself on a bus on the way out of Nigeria. Five years later, the story continues in a new sequel series.

ÒLÒTŪRÉ: THE JOURNEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: After a reel showing scenes from the 2019 film Òlòtūré, we pick up right where the film left off: Òlòtūré (Sharon Ooja) on a bus marked “Missionary” with other sex workers.

The Gist: Òlòtūré is a journalist at a paper in Lagos, and she’s been undercover as a sex worker, but she’s gotten in over her head. At this point, she’s been knocked senseless and put on that bus, headed to Benin and ultimately to Niger. It’s part of Tony (Daniel Etim Effiong), a crime boss in Lagos, to expand his empire by trafficking women out to clients in other countries.

At the same time, Beauty (Adebukola Oladipupo), another sex worker, has actually managed to escape getting rounded up by Tony’s thugs. She’s given money to take a bus home to her mother by one of the people she worked for. He orders Alero (Omoni Oboli), who recruited the girls for him, to find replacements for Beauty and her sister, whom his henchmen killed in front of the other women. But she finds out from Sir Phillip (Patrick Doyle) that one of the women in that group is a journalist.

In the meantime, Òlòtūré deals with her situation as she’s shuffled from bus to car to bus on the way to Niger. Everything changes, though, when a group of motorcycles rides up on the bus she’s in and starts shooting. It turns out that it’s a rival gang who knows that Tony is trying to invade their turf. Their way to block that is to kill everyone on that bus. Somehow, Òlòtūré and Peju (Beverly Osu) survive.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we mention above, Òlòtūré: The Journey is a follow-up to the 2019 film Òlòtūré, which has been streaming on Netflix since 2020.

Our Take: Òlòtūré: The Journey, written and directed by the same team that made the film, is tough to jump into without seeing the original movie first. In fact, given the relatively brief running time of the show’s three episodes, it’s not that hard to conceive that it’s really a 110-minute movie split into three parts. That being said, the show is so real, and so gritty it might be better to take it in in three parts rather than all at once.

A lot happens during the first episode, which is only 38 minutes. People are threatened, and those threats prompt the threatened person into threatening the people below them. Òlòtūré manages to narrowly escape a violent death and is determined to make her way back from Niger to Lagos, which is 1500km away.

Is the story particularly subtle? Not really. We all know that Òlòtūré is way in over her head, but somehow still thinks she’s going to blow the lid off the trafficking ring; she even still uses her fake name when she introduces herself to Peju, despite everything they went through after the bus was shot up. But if the show ends in Òlòtūré coming back to Lagos and putting her experiences in print, whether it’s for the paper she works for or somewhere else, then the grimness of the first episode, and Òlòtūré’s continued naivete as she gets further away from home, will have been worth it.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After being told by the publisher of her paper that the story is dead, Òlòtūré walks in a daze through the village in Niger where she ended up, wondering just where she goes from here.

Sleeper Star: Adebukola Oladipupo as Beauty, because she comes home to find that her mother was burned alive, and she’ll have to deal with her own family tragedy.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I’m supposed to kill you, but I made you, so I can’t,” Tony says to Alero after the bus gets shot up.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Òlòtūré: The Journey is a bit melodramatic, but it’s also a pretty realistic look at human trafficking in West Africa. But the series will make more sense if you watch the original film first.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.