Akhil Arora

In Call Me Bae—the new Amazon Prime Video series from Four More Shots Please! writer Ishita Moitra—an extraordinarily privileged coddled young woman falls from grace and ends up on the street. (Except she has enough ultra-expensive possessions that she could get by for years by selling them in the open market.) She stumbles her way into TV journalism and, bafflingly, lands the scoop of any reporter’s dreams on the first day of the job. (Moitra clearly has a soft spot for good-looking, fashionably dressed investigative journalists. After working with Sayani Gupta’s Damini Roy in Four More, she concocts another unlikely one in Ananya Panday’s Bella Chowdhary.) In doing so, Call Me Bae needlessly complicates its fish-out-of-water tale.

Deep into Star Wars: The Last Jedi, shortly after defeating the Supreme Leader’s highly trained elite guards, the anti-hero Kylo Ren extends his hand out to the protagonist Rey and asks her to join him. Together, he says, they can rule the galaxy. He pushes her to confront her greatest fear and assures her that she means the world to him. On the whole, the scene is both epic and intimate. A similar moment occurs late in the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as the series’ two most central forces clash in a swordfight. Sauron (Charlie Vickers) reiterates his desire to make Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) the queen of all Middle-earth. There’s nothing he wants more—and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to have her by his side.

Deep into the second season of Pachinko—the generation-spanning Apple TV+ drama series that rightfully captured hearts and won several awards upon its debut almost two-and-a-half years ago—the ruthless man of many trades, Koh Hansu (Lee Minho), utters eight words that unfortunately underpin the show: “For people like us, there is no home.” The lives of Pachinko’s characters have always been ravaged by war. First, they were made to feel lesser than and uprooted from their homeland. And since then, they’ve found themselves stuck in a world—as Koreans in Japan—that won’t really accept them no matter how much they give to it. The longing for home, the desire to feel safe and settled, and a quest for solace have defined their existence.

Early into Shekhar Home—the new mystery crime series on JioCinema—a middle-aged army doctor arrives as the new housemate at a guest house run by an elderly woman. As she shows him around the place, she apologises for the mess and the living area’s unkempt state on behalf of the other tenant. Shortly after, when the doctor makes the man’s acquaintance, he learns of his expert deduction skills. Taken aback, he remarks on his excellence. In response, the man with a keen eye for tiny details fires back: “No doctor, it’s elementary.” Yes, Shekhar Home is a Sherlock Holmes show and its beginning is a carbon copy of Sherlock’s start, the hit BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman from a decade-and-a-half ago.