Streaming in Session: 'Black Warrant,' 'Paatal Lok' and OTT's Comeback Arc in 2025
Every month, THR India captures the highs, lows, talking points, shifting patterns, and streaming rhythms of the Indian web-series ecosystem.
It’s been little more than a decade since the Indian streaming space (unofficially) took flight. It started small and ambitious, as an alt-storytelling medium for the digital generation. OTT stardom became a thing with TVF and Dice Media shows. Once the big international platforms like Netflix and Amazon arrived, the possibilities felt endless.
Over time, however, the eyeballs game made the space morph from alt-storytelling to a commercial parallel. The small screen now speaks and operates in the language of the big screen; most production houses have prolific long-form entertainment deals with such platforms.
Also Read | Allu Arjun on Success, Stardom and the 'Pushpa' Wildfire
The evolution cycle is all too familiar. But the one merit of this mainstream data expansion remains its place as a talent ecosystem. Hundreds of actors, directors, writers, and technicians—who were previously pigeonholed by the film and television industry—have gotten new and necessary leases of life.
If not for the streaming business, performers like Manoj Bajpayee and directors like Hansal Mehta might have been lost at the altar of box-office collections and audience whims. Besides the young-adult and influencer transitions, serious talents like Sidhant Gupta, Pratik Gandhi, Wamiqa Gabbi, and even veterans like Raghubir Yadav might have never found the limelight.
In that sense, January 2025 already feels like a full-circle moment.
Also Read | What To Watch by Anupama Chopra: From 'Malaikottai Vaaliban' to Oscar Contender 'The Substance'
After an underwhelming 2024, the year has begun with the return of two OG voices in this space. Vikramaditya Motwane—the architect of Netflix India’s first series, Sacred Games (2018)—is back with historical prison drama Black Warrant. The seven-episode series is already one of the year’s more original and narratively ambitious productions.
Streaming superstar Jaideep Ahlawat and writer Sudip Sharma are finally back with season 2 of Paatal Lok, a series whose first season marked the golden age of OTT filmmaking.
Whisper it quietly, but 2025 might just be the comeback arc we need, if not the one we deserve.
Speaking of comeback arcs and pandemic-era hits, season 2 of Squid Game failed to match the acclaim of its record-breaking predecessor. Artistic reasons (faded novelty, bloated tropes) aside, one wonders how much of the mixed reception stems from what I like to call the ‘Ted Lasso syndrome’.
It’s when the first season of a show released during the pandemic and, for reasons beyond its own, captures the imagination of a lockdown-stricken planet. Altered viewing habits and the psychological stranglehold of real-time quarantine drove viewers to seek either unabashed feel-goodness or twisted survival metaphors; we consumed stories differently.
The paranoia-tinted glasses came off soon after, and subsequent seasons of global phenomena rarely hit the same. Despite the hype, a lot of Squid Game’s second season is designed to replicate the language of the first, often at the cost of its own narrative progression. Only now, the franchising is more visible; the final season is around the corner. Schitt’s Creek remains the only phenomenon that rode the wave and ended at the ‘right’ time (April 2020).
Closer home, the release of The Roshans—a docu-series about one of Bollywood’s most famous movie families releasing in January 2025—completes a significant shift in the Netflix nonfiction algorithm.
Not long ago, Indian true-crime dramas were the flavour of the season: House of Secrets (2021), the Indian Predator series (2022), The Hunt for Veerappan (2023), The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth (2024), and many more.
But The Romantics (2023), the docu-series on the Yash Raj Films (YRF) legacy, seems to have unlocked the market for the new-age popcorn celebrity documentary. Such projects offer viewers the illusion of intimacy, curated personalities, and behind-the-scenes peeks.
This surprisingly bingeable genre follows in the footsteps of reality TV and AAA (Access-Ambience-Anecdotal) journalism. While the features range from Honey Singh and S.S. Rajamouli to Nayanthara, it’s safe to say that the Keeping Up With the Kardashians-styled bubble is already up and running. The Roshans is only the beginning of an inevitable, image-coded landscape.
A recent piece about casual viewing featured a viral part about Netflix executives telling screenwriters to have characters announce what they’re doing in scenes. This allows the viewer to follow a show in the background without needing to focus.
Also Read | 'Oops! Ab Kya?' Series Review: Watchable but Uninspired Remake of 'Jane the Virgin'
The factory-fication of content aside, it made me think of how clunky exposition is routinely hardwired into the Indian streaming space. Having covered Hindi web shows for a decade, I’ve come across the most uncreative interpretations of “show, don’t tell”: abrupt flashbacks, crisscrossing timelines, plots within plots.
But given this latest mandate, perhaps the visual backstory-ing and benign voice-overs are the lesser evil after all. The habit of turning dialogue into a front for action recaps is a cultural one. It’s essentially product placement, where the story and character themselves become the products.
The recent Black Warrant managed to weave the story of a changing India into its plot smartly. For instance, the cricket team’s 1983 World Cup victory on radio distracts the guards from a simmering prison riot. But this was the exception.
The norm continued elsewhere in Season 3 of Mismatched (Netflix), and other streamer productions like Doctors (JioCinema), The Pickle Factory (Waves), even the well-received Bandish Bandits (Prime Video).
Perhaps the bright side is that Season 2 of Squid Game was guilty of the same. Which raises the question: If casual viewing is globally normalised, is it casual anymore? Only time—and the comeback arc of 2025—will tell.
To read more exclusive stories from The Hollywood Reporter India's February 2025 print issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest book store or newspaper stand
To buy the digital issue of the magazine, please click here.