A bus leaving the Afghani hinterland controlled by the Taliban looks a bit like Simonsberg in Stellenbosch.

Home » TV Gone Wild: When Cape Town Doubles for Pakistan

TV Gone Wild: When Cape Town Doubles for Pakistan

Watch a foreign movie when you know it’s made in South Africa – but is meant to be somewhere else – and you can’t help looking for those telltale signs, places you recognise. It’s supposed to be Los Angeles or somewhere in the middle of America, but you know it’s the Atlantic Seaboard in Cape Town […]

By SAPeople Staff Writer
05-04-18 00:06
in Entertainment
A bus leaving the Afghani hinterland controlled by the Taliban looks a bit like Simonsberg in Stellenbosch.

Watch a foreign movie when you know it’s made in South Africa – but is meant to be somewhere else – and you can’t help looking for those telltale signs, places you recognise. It’s supposed to be Los Angeles or somewhere in the middle of America, but you know it’s the Atlantic Seaboard in Cape Town or the Karoo.

(To see how it can be done really well, watch the recent movie ‘Chronicle’ and try find something South African in it.)

A stranger entry to the annals of productions made in South Africa, however, is the fourth season of popular television series ‘Homeland’, where Cape Town – often dubbed the most beautiful city in the world – and the Winelands are meant to stand in for the Pakistani city of Islamabad and the Afghanistan countryside.

These are some of our favourite scenes…

In the first episode, a bus travels through the Afghani hinterland controlled by the Taliban, except it looks a lot like Simonsberg in Stellenbosch.

A bus leaving the Afghani hinterland controlled by the Taliban looks a bit like Simonsberg in Stellenbosch.
A scene from Homeland in which a bus is meant to be leaving the Afghani hinterland…except it’s Simonsberg in Stellenbosch.

Okay, considering the photos below, captured in Afghanistan itself, maybe that could pass.

Then there’s that big car blast involving the show’s stars Carrie (Claire Danes) and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) at this pristine circle in Islamabad with hardly any other cars on it…

The big car blast near the end of the season takes place in Islamabad. See next picture of the real Islamabad.
A blast scene in Homeland, which is meant to have happened in Islamabad, but is filmed in South Africa.

Here’s the real Islamabad. Notice any similarity?

And then there is the arrival of the Taliban leader in his home village. (Our guess is this was filmed in Observatory or Woodstock, Cape Town, with Devil’s Peak in the background.)

And then there was the arrival of the Taliban leader in his home village. (Aka the Bo-Kaap in central Cape Town.)
A Homeland scene that looks like it was filmed in Woodstock or Observatory, Cape Town.

Oh yes, in the following street scene from the TV version of Islamabad, there are some battered taxis for effect…but couldn’t someone have covered up the Game sign?

Homeland scene filmed in South Africa
Whoops, couldn’t someone have covered up the Game sign to make this look more like Islamabad than South Africa?

And finally, in the middle of what’s meant to be the Pakistani capital, there is one of the most unmistakeable buildings in Cape Town, the BP Centre.

Cape Town's BP Centre...in the middle of what's meant to be Islamabad in Homeland
Cape Town’s BP Centre…in the middle of what’s meant to be Islamabad in Homeland