Netflix’s plans for global domination take another step forward on Friday with the release of its first original Indian TV series Sacred Games. One of several Indian shows greenlit by the streaming service, it is hoped that the crime drama will follow in the footsteps of Narcos, another international series that revealed an appetite among western audiences to broaden their horizons. Yet perhaps the biggest challenge Sacred Games faces is whether it can win over domestic audiences closer to home.
Based on the acclaimed book by Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games tells the story of Sartaj Singh, a jaded cop living under the shadow of his deceased father and seeking validation from a police force he nevertheless loathes for its corruption. When Singh receives an anonymous tip-off regarding the whereabouts of Ganesh Galtonde, a notorious crime lord who has been missing for 16 years, it sets the wheels in motion for a chain of events that burrows deep into India’s dark underworld.
That there has been nothing like it on Indian television before goes without saying. In India, the small screen has always been considered a poor cousin to the mammoth film industry, dominated by soap operas about scheming mother-in-laws and tried-and-tested generic formats such as Indian Idol.
Netflix has certainly cast its net wide in terms of audiences, with the hope that Sacred Games can pique the interest both of the urban youth who are already hooked on Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why (both of which were among the most viewed Netflix shows in India last year), and also – with the internet becoming cheaper and more accessible than ever before – viewers from less affluent and rural areas.
With this in mind, Sacred Games has cast instantly recognisable names from the film industry, including director Anurag Kashyap and Bollywood star, Saif Ali Khan. The veteran actor has starred in more than 60 Bollywood films, including Dil Chata Hai and Omkara, a Bollywood remake of Othello for which he won a Filmfare Award. But casting him was a calculated decision that went beyond merely looking at box-office statistics.
Khan hails from an aristocratic background – his father, Mansoor Ali Khan, descends from one of the ruling Nawab families under the Moghul emperors and was a former captain of the Indian cricket team, while his mother is Bollywood legend Sharmila Tagore – and the combination of his Bollywood celebrity and his prestigious background gives the series both the commercial star power to attract the masses and much-needed kudos to attract the crowd who traditionally look down on Indian TV.
“It is very much an experiment,” Khan concedes. “On Netflix, people are willing to watch programmes from other countries with sub-titles because good stories transcend boundaries. However, we also want to get a lot of Indians into Netflix, [because] the internet is a big thing in India and a lot more affordable. Also, it has got to be something cooler, something edgier than regular television.”
“We don’t know how many people are going to come to Netflix or whether it’s just going to be the English-speaking audiences in India. There are many questions, but the possibilities are huge,” he adds.
If Sacred Games is courting a global audience, it is nevertheless unapologetically local in its focus. This is an ode to Mumbai, with the city as much a character of the series as Minneapolis in Fargo or Baltimore is the Wire. There is a Dickensian quality to Mumbai and this is reflected in Sacred Games. One character describes it as “a slum with palaces growing out of it” and the fault lines between these two worlds are brought to life in the show.
“We have affluent people with a really shocking attitude to the poverty on their doorsteps and in that sense it is a pretty rough place,” said Khan, who refers to the city by it’s former name, Bombay.
“Indians don’t like to be told that theirs is a poor country,” he adds. “They want to see the glamorous side. We rarely see the contradictions of a place like Bombay. Only Danny Boyle has really pointed a finger at it [with Slumdog Millionaire], but the Indians tend to say that is not really an Indian movie, it’s a Hollywood movie.”
Through Sacred Games, Khan hopes that Indians – as well as international audiences – will confront the realities of cities such as Mumbai. “Bombay is a crazy city and I think it is a much more realistic show than anything we have done in the past,” he suggests. “However, there is a beauty is those contradictions that we rarely see on screen, and I hope we have captured that.”
