Streaming in Session: When India’s OTT Originals Forget to Be Original

It’s been an underwhelming month for the Indian streaming space. Originality suffered: Netflix’s new Tamil show, The Game: You Never Play Alone, overcooks an ambitious concept — one that fuses themes of misogyny and digital gaming — to result in a generic thriller. Derivations suffered: Sony LIV’s 13th: Some Lessons Aren’t Taught in Classrooms is a vanilla TVF-coded coaching-class drama that does nothing new with the formula. Adaptations suffered: Jio Hotstar’s Search: The Naina Murder Case, despite starring Konkona Sen Sharma, becomes yet another crime remake that’s content to be content. Even non-fiction suffered: Two Much, Amazon Prime Video’s chat show hosted by actors Kajol and Twinkle Khanna, exudes celebrity-and-friends fatigue despite a guest-roster of Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Alia Bhatt, Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan and Varun Dhawan.

But the OTT landscape is never short of patterns, moments and individuals to write about.

For example, it’s worth noting that mainstream Hindi shows are expanding their geographic identities beyond the binaries of murky big cities and atmospheric small towns. The Mumbai-adjacent settings, in particular, do well to weave middle-class Maharashtrian culture into the machinations of the plot. After Dabba Cartel turned the class diversity of Thane into a character earlier this year, Search: The Naina Murder Case legitimises the open spaces and perceived urban wilderness of Vashi and Navi Mumbai. By staging a big crime investigation in the area, it exposes the genre limitations of overused mazes like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. It’s the NCR equivalent of financial-capital sagas, where characters on both sides of the law are concealed and empowered by the non-mainstream nature of the regions.

I suspect most of these productions owe Sriram Raghavan for being a genre pioneer and normalising (as opposed to fetishising) the Tier-2 spirit of Pune and Badlapur. 

Father Figures

It’s the right opportunity to write about a recurring trope this year: that of the teddy bear dad. Shows like The Ba***ds of Bollywood and Search: The Naina Murder Case have followed in the footsteps of smash-hit Saiyaara in terms of the characterisation of gentle fathers — and the more level-headed parent of the two. It’s a far cry from Bollywood melodramas of previous decades, where these men often doubled up as hot-tempered baddies with good-cop wives. Apart from playing identical-looking men, both Vijayant Kohli (in Ba***ds) and Sagar Deshmukh (in Search) evoke the reassuring anti-patriarchal warmth of the late Farooq Shaikh in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013).

They also play a key role in the advancement of central arcs. Kohli’s smiley character not only dies and humanises the young movie-star protagonist; it’s hinted that he may have wittingly or unwittingly nurtured a son that was not (biologically) his. Deshmukh’s cuddly character goes one step ahead, on an unhinged rampage, after the murder of his daughter and its headless investigation.

There’s something about watching middle-aged men with kind faces suffer a tragic fate, which somehow goes hand in glove with the redemption of their toxic and abusive counterparts on the big screen.

The Backbone Brigade

Speaking of kindness, seeing actors like Mona Singh and Manoj Pahwa shine in overnight-fame productions never gets old. Most shows and movies that revolve around green protagonists tend to have a bullet-proof supporting cast. Even though Bobby Deol, the director, and the meme-worthy youngsters walk away with most of the plaudits for The B***ds of Bollywood, Singh and Pahwa form the backbone of a show shaped by glitzy access and meta gags. Singh plays the affable but anxious mother of the hero; her track eventually defines the ‘twist’ of a storyline that refuses to take a moral high-ground and judge its seniors. Pahwa seems to be playing the comic relief as the colourful uncle, until we realise that he’s a struggler who uses humour as a coping mechanism to offset a failed music career. Both thrive in the shadows, with poignant and present performances that cushion the spoofy excesses of the Farah Khan-successor series.

Last but never the least, the perpetual resurgence of Arshad Warsi is a sight for sore eyes. He was one of the early movers in the star-to-streaming ecosystem with the national success of Asur. In the last month alone, without even counting the box-office mobility of Jolly LLB 3, Warsi has returned with the catchy cameo as gangster Gafoor (try getting the song out of your head) in Ba***ds and the lead role in the new Zee5 mytho-thriller Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas. Whether it’s films or shows, it’s just reassuring to see Munna Bhai’s swaggy ‘Circuit’ come into his own and find his own fanbase.

Hindi cinema is simply a better place when actors like him continue to thrive across mediums. It’s like meeting a friend from the good old days for a drink and a laugh — a feeling that’s going extinct in an era of algorithmic entertainment.