Udita Jhunjhunwala

Schools have long served as fertile ground for stories, but few recent series have captured the joy, absurdity and quiet idealism of a government school quite like Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya. Sharing the gentle spirit of Panchayat and Gram Chikitsalay, this easygoing seven-part show is funny, sharp and only occasionally sermonises. Created and executive-produced by Biswapati Sarkar and Sameer Saxena under the Posham Pa Pictures banner, the Hindi-language Prime Video comedy feels like a natural extension of the storytelling both have come to be associated with through shows such as Maamla Legal Hai and Home Shanti. Saxena has also helped shape the observational worlds of Gullak and Kota Factory. This latest series brings a similar specificity and humour to a struggling government school in the Delhi region. Sarkar and Saxena also pop up in brief cameos.

Set between Bhopal and misty Mussoorie, the Netflix series Musafir Cafe follows three lives that become entwined through chance encounters and life-altering choices across time and distance. Software engineer Chander (Vikrant Massey) longs for a life that finally feels like his own, while the fiercely independent divorce lawyer Sudha (Vedika Pinto) is determined to shape her future on her terms. Completing the trio is Preeti (Mahima Makwana), whose wanderlust complements her quiet resilience. Created and written by Sharanya Rajgopal and directed by Ruchir Arun (Little Things, Ghar Waapsi), the series draws on characters from Divya Prakash Dubey’s Hindi novel of the same name. At times, Musafir Cafe feels like it could have been a breezy, crisp film.

There’s a genuinely interesting film hidden inside Baby Do Die Do. It just takes far too long to reveal itself, and even then, it refuses to answer the questions that matter. The film opens with a fractured family: a deceased father, an emotionally volatile mother, twin girls, one of whom is deaf and mute. A late-night adventure results in tragedy leaving Baby alone and vengeful. Right away the questions start building—how did the girls suddenly pick up a puppy in an abandoned hotel? It’s the first of many questions the film, co-written by director Nachiket Samant with Jasmeet K Reen and Parveez Shaikh, never answers.

Isakapatnam aspires to be a sprawling crime saga in which every murder has consequences, every betrayal shifts the balance of power, and every character carries old wounds. Directed by Garry BH from a script by Prashant Ragathi with dialogues by Tajuddin Syed, the Prime Video series stars Samuthirakani as feared gangster Naidu and Aishwarya Rajesh as his daughter Bharathi. Sunil, Naresh Agastya, Merin Philip, Sudhakar Komakula, Rajeev Kanakala, Raja Chembolu and Banerjee round out an ensemble of characters including henchmen, townsfolk, cops and businessmen. The Prime Video series is set in the fictional coastal town of Isakapatnam. The town owes its prosperity to its docks, shipping trade, trucking business and steel plant – a fertile setting for a story about the nexus between crime, commerce and politics. Oddly, though, the series barely uses any of it. The docks have little bearing on the story, which unfolds mostly in houses, police stations, hideouts, and an occasional boat scene.

At 164 minutes and 50 seconds, Welcome to the Jungle doesn’t just overstay its welcome, it practically moves in. The third film in the Welcome franchise arrives with a gargantuan ensemble cast, an enormous budget and plenty of spectacle and songs. What it delivers is a chaotic, overstuffed comedy with very little jungle and an awful lot of mangled storytelling. The film opens with Johnny Lever’s character, Dubey, saying ‘This is Welcome’ three times, followed by ‘Teen baar welcome or Welcome 3’. If you want to qualify the tone of humour, it’s summed up right there—pedestrian, over-stated, self-congratulating.

After Mentalhood in 2020, Karisma Kapoor returns to the OTT space with the seven-episode series Brown. As the titular Rita Brown, Kapoor steps firmly outside her comfort zone with this crime drama. Director Abhinay Deo, best known for bringing a slick visual style and muscular energy to thrillers and action films, makes an intriguing foray into neo-noir territory. Adapted from Abheek Barua’s novel City of Death, the show is set in Kolkata and uses the city’s unique character to tell a story that is part murder mystery, part police procedural and part examination of fractured relationships and unresolved trauma. Told through a mix of Hindi, Bengali and English, the series follows Rita Brown (Kapoor), a once-respected homicide detective whose life has unravelled since solving a notorious double murder years earlier. Now battling alcoholism and carrying the burden of a troubled past, she is pulled back into active duty and tasked with solving the murder of Ahana Jaiswal, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family. Assigned to work alongside her is Inspector Arjun Sinha (Surya Sharma), a sincere and committed officer carrying wounds of his own. Together, Rita and Arjun are drawn into an investigation that uncovers layers of deception, secrets and uncomfortable truths.

Pati Patni Aur Woh Do belongs to that familiar subgenre of Hindi comedy where men create catastrophes through lies and cowardice, then expect applause for surviving the consequences. Ayushmann Khurrana plays Prajapati Pandey, a forest ranger introduced with the kind of exaggerated masculinity the film both mocks and indulges. When on a mission to trap a roaming leopard in Prayagraj, where Mudassar Aziz locates the chaos, Prajapati is described as a “leopard Casanova.”

The shepherd in question is George (Hugh Jackman), who dotes on his flock to the extent that he has named each one of them. Jackman gives George a comforting warmth. His scenes reading murder mysteries aloud to the sheep, despite insisting they understand nothing (but they do), establish the film’s gentle absurdity early on. After his sudden and mysterious death, the animals—grief-stricken and shocked by the loss—begin to step up to solve the case of George’s murder. For this, they also need to leave the meadow and cross over into the nearby town of Denbrook. Local policeman Tim Derry (Nicholas Braun) and junior reporter Elliot Matthews (Nicholas Galitzine), who recently arrived in Denbrook, lead the investigation. But the movie increasingly belongs to the sheep themselves, particularly Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George’s favourite ewe, who becomes the emotional and moral centre of the story. Her line, “Sheep don’t die, they turn into clouds,” is delivered with such simple sincerity that it forms the film’s defining sentiment.