10 Lessons in Streaming

– Bhopal is the centre of all action. Whether it is the malevolent clinical trials of Human (Disney+Hotstar), the charming family of Gullak (SonyLIV), or the education scam of Shiksha Mandal on MX, the Madhya Pradesh capital is where stories come to fruition.

– If it is Bihar, reality is dramatic. Whether it is Maharani 2 or Rangbaaz 3, much of the action is based on real events, whether it is the ghastly rape and murder of Shilpi Gautam in 1999 in Maharani 2 or the baahubali empire of Siwan’s late MP Mohammad Shahabuddin. It extends to Jharkhand with the phishing industry of Jamtara.

– If the cast is uniformly beautiful and well-groomed, they will have ugly personal lives. From Netflix’s Bombay Begums to Amazon Prime Video’s Hush Hush, gorgeous women, lovely costumes, home décor from Architectural Digest cannot hide the sex, scars and sordidness underneath. The genre was first discovered for television by the chronicler of pretty people with painful secrets, Zoya Akhtar, on Amazon Prime Video’s Made in Heaven.

– If there is a competent police officer onscreen, it will always be a woman, whether it is Vartika Chaturvedi in Delhi Crime or Geeta Tehlan in Hush Hush or Kasturi Dogra in Aranyak. They are committed, dogged, and don’t suffer fools gladly.

– It’s always better with Sai Pallavi. She’s like the ISI mark for a movie, especially if you’re new to the world of Telugu or Tamil cinema. She can dance, act, and burn up the screen, no matter who the hero is. Watch Gargi on SonyLIV to see why.

– Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives on Netflix is cringe-watching at its best, but what we really want to see is ‘The Scandalous Lives of the Bollywood Husbands’.

– Every youthful romance, whether it is an episode of Amazon Prime Video’s Modern Love or a season of Netflix’s Mismatched, has to star Rohit Saraf, currently winning hearts on the big screen as Vedha’s tragic younger brother in Vikram Vedha.

– Shefali Shah is the queen of streaming. Whether it is Darlings on Netflix, Human on Disney+Hotstar or Jalsa on Amazon Prime Video, she is every woman, everywhere, making up for lost time.

– Rocket science is actually not so difficult. Rocket Boys on SonyLIV manages to talk about nuclear power and space satellites with a remarkable degree of comfort, allowing us to glory in the dramatisations of three of the country’s greatest scientists, and doing for science what Scam 1992 did for the financial markets, making it cool.

– Sometimes the less hyped shows are the most riveting. Masoom on Disney+Hotstar is a perfect example, dropping with little fanfare and shocking everyone with its heart-stopping performances from Boman Irani and Upasana Singh. Ditto for The Great Indian Murder, also on Disney+Hotstar, loosely based on Vikas Swarup’s novel, Six Suspects. It’s a complicated yarn with a cast of several, but eventually when it all ties up, it is quite satisfying.

Sitapur’s Star

Vaibhav Raj Gupta, who has wowed audiences as Annu, the older brother in SonyLIV’s Gullak, is Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh’s biggest export to Mumbai. The actor, 31, has been in Mumbai for 14 years, and has managed to retain his sense of humour and sanity. He credits both to his love for learning new things. The actor, soon to be seen in SonyLIV’s Good Bad Girl, acknowledges Gullak has sparked many streaming clones but believes that not all have worked. An exception he likes: Disney+Hotstar’s Ghar Waapsi, set in Indore, featuring a techie who has to return home from Bengaluru when he loses his job.

Scene and Heard

Sky Original’s fiction based on real events, This England, is a stunning takedown of Boris Johnson’s handling of Covid-19, causing unnecessary deaths and creating ill-considered trauma. The six-episode series, directed by Michael Winterbottom, with Kenneth Branagh nailing Johnson’s disorganised brilliance, takes place mostly inside what is meant to be 10 Downing Street, interspersed with footage from news channels. Rishi Sunak’s character, played by Shri Patel, escapes lightly, without too much attention; with the focus on former Health Secretary Matt Hancock (played with slithery ease by Andrew Buchan) and his advisor Dominic Cummings (played by Simon Paisley Day), Patel spends most of the series pouting. Sometimes, recent history is what we most need to be reminded of.

BollywoodcinemaShefali ShahShri PatelVaibhav Raj Gupta