How Amitabh Bachchan's 'Sooryavansham' Became the 'Sholay' of TV
NRI nostalgia, the disintegration of the Indian joint family, a rare father-son relationship drama. Could these be the reasons that made Sooryavansham the most replayed Indian movie on television?
The four major versions of Sooryavansham have amassed over 640 million views on YouTube. It is among the most replayed movies on Indian television, with Sony Max telecasting it hundreds of times, ever since the channel launched in 1999 — the year of the Hindi film‘s release.
It has since remained a TRP (television rating point) goldmine that brings in viewers every single time.
The Tamil original, too, has received a standing instruction from TV bosses to air it at least once a month — a streak that has continued undisturbed for 27 years. This version, titled Surya Vamsam (1997), was the year’s biggest hit upon release, in complete contrast to its Hindi version, which flopped when it came out two years later. To give you an idea of the Hindi version’s afterlife, the biggest hit of 1999 was Sooraj Barjatya’s Hum Saath Saath Hain. But on smaller screens, its views are less than one-third of Sooryavansham’s.
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Yet, its consistent appeal remains tough to understand. Its themes remain dated, juxtaposed with old-school dialogues and filmmaking that looks too stilted — even for a film from 1999. But strangely, these appear to be markers that add to its appeal, rather than work against it. The result is an anomaly: a relic that is, at once, too precious for a generation, while being ironically amusing to those that followed.
Vikraman, the writer and director of the Tamil version, believes the film is made up of core values and emotions that will not age. “These appeal to audiences from all parts of the country, and if you watch the five versions (Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and Bengali), you’ll notice how little each new iteration deviates from the original,” he says.
The film’s failure in theatres is something he blames on how “it looked like a South dub”. It was also the last film in which Amitabh Bachchan played a younger hero, a role Vikraman wanted the actor’s son, Abhishek Bachchan, to debut with. What didn’t help either was that it released a week before one of the year’s biggest hits Biwi No.1 (1999). “I wanted Hema Malini to be there [for the older Amitabh character] and someone like Manisha Koirala as the pair for the younger Amitabh,” he says. “I personally felt the film was loaded with too many South Indian actors. Plus, it was shot in Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad.”
But what works on television doesn’t depend on what has worked in theatres.
In fact, those who watch movies on television include a large percentage of the audience that doesn’t visit theatres regularly. Speaking about what worked in its favour, though, Vikraman adds, “It is about the great Indian joint family, which is more common in the North. The dynamics of such families are complex and rich with conflict. Sooryavansham dealt with a fractured relationship between father and son — something that happens in almost 80 per cent of our families. Sons continue to long for acceptance, while fathers struggle with generational disconnect. Nothing about this will ever change.”
The dynamics of the father-son relationship are not explored as frequently, compared to films that deal with the male protagonist’s relationship with their mother or siblings. But in such films, including a blockbuster like the two KGF films (2018 and 2022), there’s a lack of complexity, a flatness because the mother is forced to remain infallible.
In Sooryavansham, the character of the father, Thakur Bhanu Pratap Singh, is flawed and egoistic. This makes him real and relatable, resulting in a film with two equally interesting protagonists. “It’s a formula that continues to work even today,” says stand-up comic and cultural commentator Shreemi Verma. “Indian movies that focus on sons and their fathers more or less work — be it Sooryavansham, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001), or even Animal (2023).”
However, she feels there are more reasons for why the film has a way to appeal to almost everyone in the family, and not just the young male viewer. “This movie has everything,” she says. “A complicated father-son relationship, an underdog rising up the ranks, a woman who insults the underdog, a woman who loves the underdog and, eventually, the big family reunion.”
She adds, “It also has a mean father — because most Indian fathers are mean. It has a humble son who does well, but still loves his father — because Indian kids should respect their parents, irrespective of how they’re treated. It has a moderately ambitious woman who rejects the son because she wants an educated partner, which obviously makes her evil. And it has an intelligent and kind woman, who is inexplicably in love with the son who looks old enough to be her ancestor. It ends with everyone reuniting. Sooryavansham is a wish-fulfilment movie for men.”
But for people from an older generation, the film is special for other reasons. Vikraman feels the film has so many characters that each viewer finds a sub-plot or storyline to connect with. “There are grandparents who rewatch the film on their phones, only for the portions in which the older Amitabh Bachchan tries to steal glimpses of his estranged grandson. With grandparents getting to see very little of their grandchildren, these scenes reflect today’s society.”
The film has subsequently built a strong fanbase among women too, even though the film might appear to be about two men and their egos. “We’ve had hundreds of films romanticising the notion that ‘behind a successful man, there is a woman.’ But here was a film that said the opposite. The son, Hira Pratap, was supportive of his wife Radha’s (Soundarya’s) dream of becoming an IAS officer. She was more educated, but this did not affect the hero’s ego. It made Hira very attractive to the women of that generation. He became aspirational to those who were forced to give up their careers to become housewives and were then watching the film on television.”
Film critic and journalist Subha J Rao has watched multiple versions of the film and remembers the impact of the Tamil original from when it released. Based on how films were being made at that time, she even calls Surya Vamsam “strangely, pro-women”.
“Heroes in our movies then would address women with terms like vaadi or podi, showing no respect. But in Surya Vamsam, the younger hero is respectful and supportive of his wife’s ambitions. We see him do as much work in the kitchen as his wife and later, when she becomes an IAS officer, she doesn’t turn into someone else. This was the period of films like Mannan (1992) and Padayappa (1999), where women in power were shown to be arrogant. In this film, however, we saw a woman in power being treated with dignity.”
She recalls a scene from memory that had been particularly impactful when she first saw it. “It’s the scene in which Devayani’s father visits her for the first time after she gets married to Sarathkumar. She comes from privilege, and when her rich father arrives, she is so broke that she cannot even feed him a full meal. But her father, instead of feeling bad that his daughter is now living in poverty, respects her for adjusting and working hard to make her way up.”
Small Screen Sensation
Stand-up comic Amit Tandon represents one of the modern viewers of this film. Agreeing to this reading, explaining how television in India revolves around a female audience, especially at the non-prime time hours when the film was mostly telecast, he says, “It wasn’t heavy on heroics. The film is the kind we see coming from the Ekta Kapoor school of TV serial-making. It was a family drama with a woman playing an IAS officer, appealing to the female audiences.”
Udayan Shukla, head of programming, Hindi movie cluster, Sony Pictures Networks India, says, “A key factor in a movie’s success on television lies in its ability to connect with the audience. In the case of Sooryavansham, the protagonist is a perfect son who always respects his father, he is a responsible husband who supports his wife and strives hard to provide for his family. These values resonate with the viewers and make people want to see the movie again and again.”
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Sooryavansham appeals to the nostalgia of how our families used to be, adds Vikraman. “With the grand reunion at the end, it allowed viewers to witness a fantasy that was no longer plausible in reality.”
This is the reason why the film finds such a strong connection with the home-sick NRI, he explains. “NRI (non-resident Indian) parents and grandparents show their children Sooryavansham as a form of cultural learning. Like the Iranian classics or our own films like Mother India (1957), my film encapsulates core Indian values. Such films are no longer made, so they have to rely on showing this film to the next generation to create some sort of connection.”
From a sociological perspective, writer-researcher Amrita Nandy understands the appeal of such films with the NRI audience. “I find NRIs to be more ‘Indian’ than most of us living in India. Indians abroad do not want their children to get ‘white-washed’, so there’s a cultural education that takes place at home, which includes music, clothing, food and, of course, certain movies.”
The Love-Hate Audience
While Tandon admits to not being a fan, he has found himself watching smaller portions of the film, whenever it is playing on TV. “It’s not a film you watch after making plans. It’s the sheer volume of its re-telecast that gets you to watch it, whenever you browse through channels. With time, I have found myself figuring out the story and today, like a lot of people, I know every single scene even without watching the movie as a whole.”
The film became something of a pop-culture legend after it transitioned smoothly to the internet. It was a movie that flourished, “during the golden age of YouTube, Twitter and maybe even Instagram content, back when a bunch of millennials rode on the Pretentious Movie Reviews–nostalgia trip and started to re-watch movies like Sooryavansham, Ajnabee (2001) and more, around 2014. Their popularity helped in the film becoming a popular content bucket for people who just wanted to be funny online,” Verma adds.
But this is just part of the appeal for the film. With millions of views still coming in, and with many such family dramas releasing since, none have been able to create the same impact or recall. “It’s a film with an innocence that’s not easy to recreate,” says Vikraman. “It was not a manipulative film, and the emotions were all organic and genuine. That’s all there is to it. When they watch Sooryavansham, they’re trying to recapture something they do not see anymore. It’s like accessing an old part of them — something they want to pass on to their children. It’s not about watching something fresh or new, the idea is for the film to take you back to a better time.”
As for a fan like Rao, the appeal is in being able to find a home in the familiar. “Imagine watching a film set in today’s time in which you see an old man approaching a young boy in school with candy,” she says. “The second a film sets up such a scene, we are triggered by what’s going to happen. But we see the same scene in Sooryavansham and feel comforted. It takes us back to a time when we were more innocent and so were our movies. It is the dal-chawal of cinema."