The 5 Best Indian Shows of 2025 So Far

Streaming, once touted as a solution to cinema’s safe and cloistered perspective, has been tamed over the past few years. This year, thus far, too, the streaming landscape has been one of few exceptions to this rule.

The following stories, across languages, however, worked within existing genre templates and expectations, only to explode it—the way Paatal Lok and Black Warrant rearranged the crime genre, proposing that patient storytelling can still be tense; or Khauf and Bhog that pushed the edges of the horror genre even as it taps into it; or Love Under Construction, whose lightness never feels weightless.

Paatal Lok (Season 2)

Language: Hindi

OTT: Prime Video

The long-awaited second chapter of jaded Delhi policeman Hathi Ram Chaudhary not only surpasses expectations, it feels more human. The characters, their conflicts and moralities, and the bonds they share come into focus. The broader politics of Nagaland and northeast-versus-mainland metaphors supply this treatment; the twisty investigation itself isn’t as important as the stories of those in it. The prescient moment between Hathi Ram and friend-turned-boss Ansari is already a ‘Scene of the Year’ contender. Most of all, Jaideep Ahlawat’s protagonist keeps finding new ways to realise that the man he is will always be inversely proportional to the cop he becomes.

Black Warrant

Language: Hindi

OTT: Netflix

As a long-form Hindi project, Black Warrant goes where few fact-based historicals have gone before. It is a largely plotless and freewheeling excavation of both Bollywood and Indian masculinity. Its fresh-faced protagonist (Zahan Kapoor), a new Tihar jailer in the early 1980s, becomes a lens through which we see an ageless portrait of institutional failure and everyday heroism. The writing, acting and production value remain grounded; the ‘evolution’ of its central character — as a sensitive outsider who’s changing the system by merely existing — does not resort to broad strokes. The show is, in many ways, a different licence to thrill.

Khauf

Language: Hindi

OTT: Prime Video

Another example of how streaming channels the talent that mainstream storytelling rejects, Khauf is an eerily staged supernatural thriller that strips the genre down to its most lived-in element: fear of the male gaze. Set in modern-day Delhi and revolving around a sexual assault survivor in a ladies’ hostel, Khauf implies that fiction isn’t a patch on the horrors of reality. It’s an intricately designed, atmospheric and well-cast series — one that isn’t afraid to confess the rot is so deep that not even the afterlife is safe for the average woman. The genre tropes of possessions and exorcism are inverted to present a distinctly Indian truth: life is scary enough.

Love Under Construction

Language: Malayalam

OTT: JioHotstar

This slice-of-life dramedy comes across as a modern take on the age-old problems of every middle-class man and the not-so-classy people he’s surrounded by. It is the closest we’ve got in recent times to a sub-genre we may only call the Sreenivasan comedy. With a bunch of relatable characters trying to do their best in the many challenges that come their way, Love Under Construction is that rare binge-worthy Malayalam series that doesn’t feel like a feature film chopped into pieces.

Bhog

Language: Bengali

OTT: Hoichoi

Parambrata Chattopadhyay’s Bhog is a hypnotic, slow-blooming horror that slips between myth and madness. Based on Avik Sarkar’s story, this six-episode series follows Atin (Anirban Bhattacharya), a solitary salesman whose life unravels after discovering a mysterious four-armed deity. What begins as reverence becomes ravenous devotion, pulling him into a world where hunger is divine, and offerings blur into sacrifice. With Parno Mittra’s unsettling turn as Damri, Nabarun Bose’s eerie score, and an atmosphere steeped in shadow and silence, Bhog becomes a meditation on faith, isolation, and surrender. Bhattacharya anchors it with precision — a man hollowed by belief.