This got me thinking of the better TV show you could have with the concept ditching the Resident evil baggage.
1) If you want to have it set in South Africa, have that actually matter: make crazy CEO lady some brand of native South African White: looking up the actor, she's 44, which puts her in the perfect position to be a disillusioned but still clinging on to hope South African Patriot: she would have been a young girl/teenager when Apartheid ended, perfect time to be filled with youthful optimism for the future, and to be maximumly disappointed, finally being shipped off to America for college/etcetera.
Thus, in her actions she's filled with deeply held contradictory convictions: born in South Africa, believer in the dream of Unity, but also faced with the reality that to create the dream in her native homeland requires a super gated community. You can keep her wife, and play up her West Coast privileged position as coming from that background and the kind of life she lived in America, have have it hit up against the unpleasant reality of operating where she is, in the kind of business she's in, and a steadily failing business that needs a big win, lest the Native South African pharmaceutical industry dies, along with her family legacy and, implicity, the noble dream of South Africa.
She's an ambitious, big dreamer who's not really prepared to take up where her father was slowly failing, but self delusional and desparate to push forward, damn the risk, risks she's often clearly not fully aware of.
2) Lance Reddick can keep his roll, just not as wesker, but probably still a scientist, or maybe just a general "troubleshooter" type. Of of the actors age of 60, he's the perfect age to be someone who's not really the CEO's friend, as seems implied by the show, but her father's friend: if he came into the father's employ when his character was in his 20s, that would have their relationship starting in the 1980s. Lot of room for morally questionable things to be done by a bioweapon company operated out of South Africa in the 1980s.
Instead of awkwardly shoving in a weskerish backstory, instead he's basically a semi-retired Bond henchman. If you want a bit of humor, have him very matter of factly refer to some crazy 80s action movie thing he did back in the day which completely clashes with the modern serious tone.
If you want to keep "inspired by" elements of resident evil, he can be one of the people who helped find the original T-virus in the jungle, and did all sorts of horrible things in its testing and building up of the Father's business empire.
There could be a whole bunch of rumors of him being something close to a co-founder with the CEO's dad, with endless rumors among the rank and file whether he wasn't formally a vice president through racism, not liking the limelight, or among the newer members if he's a diversity hire, someone they can pin achievements on to give a black face to the company, since its not clear to most what exactly he actually does.
Keep him as a very sensible, grounded man with nothing in the manner of grand visions or goals. He doesn't emotionally care about South Africa or any dreams of unity or separateness, one way or another, as a foil to the idealistic younger CEO. The unsentimentally can cut both ways though: he has no delusions of grandeur, but little in specific moral scruples either: you can have some kidnapping subplot (part of the broader "setting this in South Africa should matter"), had have him deal with it in a calm, rational, and completely ruthless manner.
The kind of man where the closest thing he really has to morality is loyalty: he's loyal to the Late CEO, the current one by the loyalty to the prior, his daughters (that can be a clone or other mystery box), and maybe some other person. So, while he might not push for anything terrible, he's not going to turn lightly either.
3) Keep the daughters, but, well, better. Have them be more aware of how big a deal their dad is: its excusable if maybe in America he operated more independently, so they're less plugged into how big of a deal for the company he is, but they really don't act the part of children in their position. At the very least there should be some awareness that their dad is scary. Having the children raised in America makes them useful viewpoint characters on the challenges of life and culture shock of living in South Africa, and can further highlight the crazy difference between the company town Pokien village and the reality of the surrounding country. Further element of the "making the fact they're in South Africa matter".
4) Make everyone coming to South Africa matter in some way: there doing some final thing on joy, the wonder drug that can save the company, but they need to close the American operations for some reason. Or they're just cash strapped, and there's a South African grant that lures the company back from its American operations, putting the whole operation on much riskier footings which causes the disaster.
5) Whatever you do, try to stay to one, linear timeline. There's only 8 episodes anyways, you don't actually have to rush things. Get all the characters together, build them up, build up tension on what happening and build to the tottering disaster. Since your not actually tied to resident evil, and your not pre-showing the outcome, things can go either way: either disaster is averted, or not.
Obviously, going with the theme of the show, however disaster comes, and in some way the main characters are directly responsible. Make it clear why. Also take the focus on one timeline to fill in characters people like and are invested in. Then you do the time jump once its clear what's happing, why its unavoidable, and where people initially are going.
6) Then you can do the post apocalypse travel vlog: one of the daughters is part of the academy, made up of survivors of the company, instead of a bunch of random. They're trying to find some sort of cure, feeling guilty and responsible for the disaster, and wanting to fix it, or somehow do right. The role Umbrella plays in the show can instead be played more plausibly by someone else, like the UN: have them playing GDI, with however much shades of gray makes sense showing (also dependent on run time), which you can do freed from the Umbrella name which seems to demand comical evilness.
Have some people, possibly front line especially, in it to help people and restore the world. Others at higher levels can more explicitly in it for more nefarious New World Order stuff, and are much more opportunistically using this crisis as a power grab, or worse, some sort of idealistic utopian vision. Likewise in why exactly their hunting old company people: to do justice? To buy the GDI legitimacy by hunting down the people responsible, justice being a secondary concern to propaganda wins? Or do they have their own desires with their capture? Maybe some want dead some want alive?
The GDI/UN can be contrasted with the areas the GDI doesn't control, or only controls partially, exploring some actual ideas rather than just "random crucified french men in a castle with strangely middle aged garbs working the fields". By doing things linearly, you can actually focus a full episode on the settlement/problem of the week, instead of dividing attention between all these flashbacks.
If star trek can do a good exploration of some concept, and Stargate was able to explore some society with enough depth to be interesting in an hour episode, you could do the same with this show with the episode mostly focusing on, well, that particular episodes story.
deadline.com
