MAKE IN INDIA

Two years in the making, Netflix’s first Indian original series, Sacred Games, isn’t the emphatic bang the company might have hoped for. But it’s a decent crime drama that could gather steam in a second season— heralding more to come. “We are actually commissioning more series here… than any other market outside of US,” says Erik Barmack, Netflix’s vice president of international originals. So far, the company has announced seven Indian projects. Four of them are based on novels, including Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. “This is a new era for TV. It’s global TV which means great stories can come from anywhere,” says Barmack, who thinks Sacred Games could attract as many global fans as the network’s

Dark (Germany) series.

Time will tell if the exotic locale, stylised treatment and odd song-and-dance number will score with foreign audiences. But there’s no doubt the series has already made waves in the industry here.

“If you see Sacred Games, it’s actually the story of Bombay becoming Mumbai,” says Anurag Kashyap who shared directing duties with his Phantom Films partner Vikramaditya Motwane, who is also credited as the executive producer. While Kashyap took charge of shooting gangster Ganesh Gaitonde’s arc, Motwane handled inspector Sartaj Singh’s mission to save Mumbai. The show, said Motwane, is the ‘first time’ they worked in a writers’ room with Kelly Luegenbiehl, vice president (creative), international originals), coming down to work alongside head writer Varun Grover and Vasant Nath and Smita Singh.

In Kashyap’s hands, Gaitonde’s story is visually stunning. But for Indians steeped in local gangster stories, there is a sense of familiarity watching Nawazuddin Siddiqui play a gun-toting criminal whose journey shows how the city’s socio-cultural fabric changed, making space for hatred and violence. The emotional core of the series lies with Sartaj, and Saif Ali Khan pulls off the part with measured restraint that leaves viewers rooting for the troubled hero. Alokananda Dasgupta’s background score adds heft to the proceedings, and there are some excellent performances from key supporting cast including Kubbra Sait as the performer Kukoo, Jitendra Joshi as Sartaj’s subordinate Katekar, Jatin Sarna as Gaitonde’s right hand man Bunty, and Luke Kenny as the menacing Malcolm. The writers admirably keep the suspense taut in Sartaj’s morally complex universe, and while it stumbles in the middle, the series gains momentum in the last two episodes—which hold a few surprises.

—Suhani Singh