Suchin Mehrotra reviews Made In India: A Titan Story, director Robbie Grewal's series chronicling the origins of the Tata Empire's iconic watch brand, for The Hollywood Reporter India. Based on Vinay Kamath's book Titan: Inside India's Most Successful Consumer Brand, the show follows how, through the 70s and 80s, Tata executive Xerxes Desai (Jim Sarbh) founded Titan and built a world-class watch under the guidance of JRD Tata (Naseeruddin Shah). Suchin finds the Amazon MX Player series warm, deeply felt and immensely huggable, drawing an unavoidable comparison to Rocket Boys given the shared heart-first DNA. He argues that more than a corporate success story, this is a tale framed as a fable of national pride, but one that soars because of its delicate love for its characters rather than its milestones. Across six achingly sincere episodes, he cares about the Titan story because he cares about the figures behind it.
Suchin reserves particular praise for Jim Sarbh in what he calls arguably his finest, most enjoyable performance yet, alongside a tremendous Naseeruddin Shah whose careful, considered words carry real weight, and a flawless ensemble that includes a scene-stealing Vaibhav Tatwawadi as right-hand man Akash, a self-assured Kaveri Seth as marketing head Megha and a gentle Lakshvir Saran as engineer Gaurav, assembled by casting director Yash Naagarkoti. He admires how the series lives in service of its episodes rather than reverse-engineering cliffhangers, singling out the intimate moments that make a grand story of achievement leap to life. His criticisms are minor: the passage of two decades is never quite felt as characters don't visibly age, and the episode built around Titan's iconic ad and jingle is the least affecting because the milestone tickbox trumps the human story. His THR Bottom Line is that a show about a watch company has no business being this heartfelt.
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