"We are happy that TVF’s Gullak has broken the jinx of Seasons-2’s in Indian web Series"

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Answers are given by

Shreyansh Pandey, Head of TVF Originals

Vijay Koshy- President & Business Head

Deepak Mishra- Director Panchayat

Palash Vaswani - Director, Gullak-2

Rupal S

Q: 2020 was a unique year where every business was badly affected, but TVF seems to have hit it out of the park with the back-to-back success of Panchayat, Interns & now Gullak 2. How has Pandemic been for TVF?

Vijay: I think 2020 has been one of the toughest years for mankind in a long time and lockdowns & market forces made it worse for individuals as well as companies. It was no different for TVF, but like they say that tough times bring the best in you if you are worthy. Arunabh, our Founder & Chairman was determined to help us all sail through this without compromising on our spirit of telling great stories. And that's exactly what we did. We focussed on our core and removed distractions in our business strategy and the result is in front of us with Gullak Season-2 breaking all records from reviews to viewership.

Q: Yes, not just that, but Gullak-2 seems to have finally broken the jinx of Season-2's in India and performed even better than Season-1. Some of the biggest shows like Sacred Games & Breathe saw their Sequels tank very badly. What do you think is the reason behind it, has changing strategy helped?

Shreyansh: First of all, as a lover & maker of shows we are really happy to hear that Gullak-2 has broken the jinx of Season-2's in India and we only hope & wish that we can have more and more shows with successful subsequent seasons. While no one can predict the success of content, I can share with you what we are trying to do, not just with Gullak-2 but for all our upcoming shows after changing our strategy is that get back to our foundation of storytelling. We are creating shows with the same simplicity & honesty with which TVF started and no matter what happens if one follows the principles of content creation at TVF, we know that the result will be amazing no matter what. Like in Gullak-2 we had a completely new team of writers and directors but the beauty of stories only increased, because we reinforced the process.

Q: Palash, While Directing Gullak-2 which I presume happened right after lockdown, what are the preparations you did and what challenges you faced?

Palash: Shooting is anyway a very unpredictable process and if you throw a highly contagious pandemic in the mix, then you have a recipe of surprises. But as a director, you live for the magic that one gets to create with so many variables. After sitting home for 6 months in lockdown, we all were raring to start work. Shreyansh had been developing & Durgesh was writing the show for few months but my actual work started the day we had an all-team narration with Arunabh where he suggested his last set of changes and left me with a set of very tough questions that I had to answer. Some of them seemed quite unreal but he soon made us realize that shooting this show is nothing less than a battle. With him as a producer, you know that he is going to trust you blindly but also ask you blinder questions so that you are ready to face the worst on set. This time even the script had few new nuances which personally excited me as a storyteller and Shreyansh was standing with me throughout to bring that to life.

Shreyansh: I think we all have to give the most credit to Palash for having pulled this off amidst such a tough time. We had intermittent curfew still happening when we started the pre-production and had to cancel recce twice before we could go. Palash worked out every detail of the schedule as we shot Gullak in live locations, but we were also very clear that we are not going to compromise on anyone's health. The Actors showed immense support. Vijay sir, Mishraji, and Arunji were available anytime we needed them and made sure that any problem was attended to immediately.

Vijay: I think we all have to thank our Studio Head Arun here for making all our shows happen. TVF finished shooting for 12 shows in four months as soon as lockdown opened thanks to Arun & his team at TVF production studio.

Q: Deepak, Panchayat has been winning viewers and awards since its release. How was the show conceived and what makes TVF shows different from others?

Deepak: The idea of making a show on Indian villages is something that Arunabh shared with all of us sometime in 2016, where he wanted to make something like a new age Malgudi Days which is a tribute to Rural India. He had visualised the story of a character from the village itself who goes to a city to study and has come back. He trusted me and Chandan to work on it and later we changed the story, where Abhishek has never been in a village, which is what we see in the show.

I humbly think that many great stories are being told in the streaming world, I love Scam-1992 and would hope to make something like that in the future. Yes, TVF stories have an inherent style and sensibility but above all what makes our stories go an extra mile from others is the culture & vision which Arunabh has stilled in our system. He sees what others don't.

Palash: I would like to add here that Mishraji is one of the most meticulous directors I have ever seen and the kind of details he has created in Panchayat will go down in the history of shows. I have personally worked with him as an associate and it's a delight to see his prep.

Q: TVF has been a pioneer in online content in India with 1st Youtube creators and 1st Web Series, but Now Streaming is mainstream, so what is next at TVF and what stories can the viewers look forward to?

Shreyansh: OTT space has grown by leaps and bounds and it has only allowed creators like us to tell more stories. We have been busy developing and shooting shows back to back and the game has just begun. We are also very fortunate to have Vijay Sir back at TVF as President and business head who is already working on a very ambitious canvass. He has only strengthened our existing partnership with Brands & Platforms and we will hopefully tell more genres of stories across short-form and long-form, for a larger number of partners & brands under his guidance. We've forayed into regionals with the remake of India's first web show Permanent Roommates in Telugu as Commitmental and a brand new show in Marathi alongside developing more regional shows for various platforms.

Vijay: Shreyansh is very kind, but like I said in the beginning that it's going to be laser focus of TVF to partner with as many OTT platforms & Brands as we can and continue doing what TVF has been doing for almost a decade now, which is to tell great stories and empower talents in front & behind the camera.

I am in great company with Shreyansh heading our Originals and working with more writers on increasing the roaster of our shows while our team of writers & directors are working on their next seasons and new projects.

Q: So guess we will get to see the 2nd season of Panchayat & the 3rd Season of Gullak soon.

Vijay: Yes and also Kota Factory season-2, Hostel Daze season-2, and subsequent seasons of some of India's most loved shows like Permanent Roommates, Tripling, Flames, Yeh Meri Family are under development while 3 new genres with three big OTT platform will also be announced soon.