Beginning, end, meandering middle

Unlike with film, the last impression isn’t the lasting one in a series, if it takes you forever to get there, no? When do you cease to binge?

There ought to be a term in economics/finance for the optimal point on the savings-investment curve, when you decide to cut back on losses. Forfeiting all investments thus far, knowing the payoff, if at all, is so far away on the axes, that it isn’t going to be worth it.

The same word must apply to life plus time invested on desi web/OTT series—for, what is life, if not time. 

Consider the Netflix series, Killer Soup. Once the set-up is done—in an attempt to be absurdist in a Hindi series, set in a trilingual Tamil Nadu, with the great Manoj Bajpayee in a double role—novelty starts to swiftly wear off. 

Laws of diminishing marginal utility, ie engagement for entertainment, sets in, by the third episode, already. 

But I stick around until the fifth or so. Knowing so much attention has been paid, after all. Yet, there are at least a couple of hours left to go!

Which is the length of a full, frickin’ feature film, still. And since you’re trained to treat this as film—once you’ve started, you must finish!

This dilemma is quite different from, say, Rohit Shetty’s Indian Police Force, simultaneously, on Prime Video—so full of clichés, from the get go, that you could just leave it on, until you pass out on the couch. 

God knows, I’ve watched many desi series, simply to put myself to sleep: The Great Indian Murder (Disney+ Hotstar), Bestseller (Prime Video), Choona (Netflix)… Low stakes, zero return. 

And that’s how we’ve traditionally consumed network TV, designed to encourage sloth, zapping between channels, over 1,000-episoders, scripted on sets, that could go on for years! 

Netflix content boss Ted Sarandos tells me he had a tough time, initially, explaining to folks in Bombay what a Netflix/OTT series was: “It’s not TV. It’s not film. Okay, a long movie then,” they concurred. 

That explains the number of Bombay filmmakers, who graduated to filming Netflix series. Instead of blokes from the local TV industry, at first. How does a film script play out? Quite simply, with a beginning, middle, and end; namely, the three acts, what else. 

What about a series—demanding equal attention as a film? Take Killer Soup, on which I must offer no consumer-take, since I couldn’t finish it. 

I clicked on it, because it’s directed by Abhishek Chaubey, one of India’s finest filmmakers. The same reason I clicked on Raj & DK’s Guns & Gulaabs (& lots of garbage in between). Or sat through Reema Kagti, Zoya Akhtar’s Dahaad (2023, Prime Video).

As with the latter two shows, I’m almost certain the final episode of Killer Soup is a killer. Which means, as for a movie, there’s the beginning (initial episode; set-up), and an end (the last; payoff). 

Except, for a series, there’s a middle, and a middle, and a middle… The battle of the bulge, while you soldier on, for hours. Unlike with films, the last impression isn’t the lasting one—if you’ve taken forever to arrive at it, no? 

Is there an ongoing torture of film scripts to fit into a series then? Not when it’s decidedly episodic, like shorts (Made in Heaven). Or, more recently, Jubilee (2023)—sufficient material, fleshed out, without worrying about cliffhangers.

Or, as recently, Scoop, or The Railway Men, like Trial By Fire—tightly scripted around an event—or Kohrra, with multiple, intriguing lives, before they merge.

All four on Netflix. The latter two shows directed by Randeep Jha that many wouldn’t have heard of. He didn’t possess a filmography to speak of, before the big-ticket OTT series.

Jha is an unsung success story. The success of shows on OTTs gets measured by the number of hours viewed by audiences—rather than clicks, per se.

Does that audience metric actively discourage suitably edited shows of shorter durations? For which, there’s always film; often superior, anyway. 

As it is, everyone complains about how budgets for Indian OTTs shrank, post-pandemic. Did box-office stars piling on to the medium crowd out some of the investments? 

So, you must get past Shetty’s Indian Police Force (that I probably won’t), or sit through Ajay Devgn’s Rudra (2022, Disney+ Hotstar), that I simply couldn’t. 

Either way, in general, writers aren’t paid peanuts for monkeys anymore. Could it be that, like executives, who run streaming platforms, the hiring of director/showrunner is based on CV alone; barely opening up the scene/space, as you’d expect? 

Once the show’s a hit—often even before it—subsequent seasons get greenlit. It’s called scaling, in corporate terms. Sequels for safe investments simply don’t stop. Attempting something new? 

There’s a films department in law firms, vetting scripts—scared silly of any possible backlash from the big-brother state, and activists/trolls—making you wonder how anything gets made at all!

Okay, that’s enough for a morning rant, as you wonder what desi stuff to watch tonight. But that’s what this is. Not some open letter to Netflix, Prime Video, etc—you do you! 

Among the most watched OTT shows of 2023, as per an Ormax survey, were Taaza Khabar, Aarya 3 (Disney+ Hotstar), Asur 2 (Jio). The only Indian series to feature on Netflix’s self-revealed top 400 shows, globally, was Rana Naidu. So… Well.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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