Rahul Desai

Imagine an enticing cricket match. The players have serious skills. The spectators are having a blast. The momentum swings back and forth. Until suddenly, out of nowhere, a batsman does something controversial: he gets out on purpose. He ‘sacrifices’ his own innings so that his teammate, the more deserving candidate, can smash the winning runs. The commentators then play down the incident and reveal that this whole match was planned down to the T — it was all a ruse to prove that cricket is a selfless sport. Nothing was real. In fact, a multibillion-dollar corporation donated a small fortune to NGOs for every wicket and boundary. It’s not enough that cricket entertains; it must make the world a better place. Fans must be taught the value of humanity, even if it’s at the cost of the game. Some might call this charity. I call it ethical match-fixing.

Unlike most action-adventure franchises, Mission: Impossible has often thrived on expressing how hard it works. It’s the opposite of effortless. Nothing looks easy; nobody is smooth and sophisticated; not a frame seems bereft of blood, sweat, madness and tears. A large part of its allure is rooted in this utter lack of vanity, this desire to be open about its working-class spectacle. Tom Cruise, arguably the most majestic of modern superstars, hasn’t been afraid to channel this ugliness as Ethan Hunt. His stunts over the years — including a (literally) breath-taking underwater quest and an acrobatic mid-air brawl in the latest instalment — feature all sorts of cosmetic imperfections: the rippling of skin folds, awkward facial contortions, wide-eyed terror, garbled gasps, desperate lunges. The miracle was always how real and impossibly human he looked.

It’s a strange week to be a Hollywood nerd. I binge-watched all the seven Mission: Impossible movies in anticipation of The Final Reckoning. Psychologically, this made me feel invincible — I almost found myself walking into oncoming traffic on a Mumbai highway (the potholes slowed down the cars, but never mind), convinced that I’d Ethan-Hunt my way out of danger. Nothing could kill me; I felt braver every time I risked my life to reach a place. Then I speed-watched the five Final Destination movies in anticipation of the sixth, Final Destination Bloodlines, which is more of a reboot but never mind. Just to get into the spirit of things. Psychologically, this made me feel extremely killable. On one hand, the M:I movies injected blind courage into me, but on the other, my mind was suddenly wired to obsess about a million gruesome ways I could perish the moment I walked out my front door. Was I fearless or scared sh*tless? I don’t know anymore. Maybe it’s the same thing.

Kull: The Legacy of the Raisingghs opens with a bloody corpse floating in a palatial pool. The senile King of Bikaner, Chandra Pratap Raisinggh (Rahul Vohra), has been murdered. The butler did not do it. As is the template, we learn of the days and circumstances leading up to the tragedy. The next three episodes revolve around a birthday celebration gone wrong, lots of wheeling and dealing, and of course, a dysfunctional and greedy family. Everyone needs money, nobody is happy, and almost nobody is sad that the old man popped it. There’s the oldest, Indrani (Nimrat Kaur), in a lavender marriage with the Chief Minister’s gay son, Vikram (Suhaas Ahuja). There’s Kavya (Ridhi Dogra), the pensive one handling the property; she’s having an affair with the videographer (Arslan Goni) who’s filming this royal family for a streaming platform. There’s Abhimanyu (Amol Parashar), the coke-addicted and bratty prince who addresses an indulgent Indrani as “maa” (mother). And there’s Brij (Gaurav Arora), the king’s illegitimate son and the only loyal royal around. A cocky CBI officer named Bhagwan (what else?) arrives, sorts through the fresh characters and the raw footage, and the killer is revealed as early as the fourth episode.

Thunderbolts* has a soul beneath layers of superhero set pieces and tropes — it mixes a bit of Inception (shame rooms full of old memories) with some Inside Out and Hancock. It’s not subtle with its gimmicks and visual symbolisms, of course, but it suggests that all the superhero fans who flock to theatres in search of escapism and thrills are inherently wired to avoid the imperfections of being human. It forces most MCU enthusiasts to confront the very life that the comic-book multiverse protects them from.

A miniseries adaptation of Alan Alda’s moderately popular 1981 rom-com of the same name, The Four Seasons revolves around a group of six lifelong friends — or three couples — on four seasonal trips together. Two episodes per ‘season’: a neat riff on the TV-sitcom template. It opens with a lake-house weekend to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the couples. Things go awry for the gang when the seemingly loving husband expresses his desire to divorce his wife. The woman, on her part, is blissfully planning a vow renewal ceremony. The consensus among the friends is that the successful 50-something man is having a midlife crisis. The consensus is also that nobody is as happy as they appear.

Needless to say, the creators of Gram Chikitsalay — a five-episode dramedy that revolves around an urban doctor (Amol Parashar, as Dr. Prabhat Sinha) who arrives to take charge of a derelict PHC (Primary Health Center) in rural Jharkhand — are also the creators of Panchayat. In recent interviews, they mentioned the term “Village Cinematic Universe,” a grounded TVF version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the YRF Spy Universe. The irony of the commodification of small-town life (featuring Gullak, Kota Factory, Aspirants) is lost on most, but that’s a formal complaint for another day. The streaming platform, Prime Video, is already a step ahead: its release of Dupahiya (a motorbike goes missing in a…Bihari village) in March marked the expansion of the ‘Cutesy Village Universe’ franchise: a nice cast, colourful personalities, curated nothingness, grassroots commentary, cultural tokenism.

If you’ve followed Hindi web shows long enough, you’ll know that “fun & frothy” is streaming lingo (and euphemism) for “empty, expensive, glossy, puerile, performative and garishly produced young-adult-but-Bollywood-scale entertainment”. It’s a very specific subgenre of designer nothingness — the storytelling equivalent of a brown mannequin at a MET gala whose theme is ‘Sexy and Flawed’. Think Four More Shots Please!, Eternally Confused and Eager for Love, Mismatched, Jee Karda, Call Me Bae and now, The Royals: a series so frothy and stretched that a dust storm wrecked my room, the wifi broke, I fell violently ill and a war broke out in the real world during its 8-episode run.