Udita Jhunjhunwala

Shashank Khaitan’s Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari feels like a film that’s already over before it begins. The title practically spoils its own ending. What we experience is a 135-minute journey which is more of a decorative detour than a meaningful ride. Packed with lavish costumes, picturesque Udaipur, endless pre-wedding functions, than one can count, this is the kind of movie that dazzles the eyes but barely stirs emotions. Khaitan and producers Dharma have embraced what one could call ‘wedding album cinema’—opulent sets, attractive costumes and meticulous staging. High on style, but low on logic or storyline.

For as long as Bollywood has existed, dynasties have shaped its stories, both on and off screen. Shah Rukh Khan, however, was the self-made outlier—the Delhi boy who rewrote the rules of stardom. His son Aryan Khan inherits not just wealth and visibility, but the paradox of being heir to self-made Bollywood royalty. So, when Aryan steps forward as writer-director of The Ba***ds of Bollywood, the series is inevitably being measured against not just his craft but his surname also. From its opening frames, The Ba***ds of Bollywood announces itself as more than just another OTT drama. Aryan’s debut as director is glossy, meta, and occasionally satirical, as eager to lampoon the industry as it is to luxuriate in its glossy surfaces. The series is, in many ways, a tug-of-war between love and resentment: for the power of Bollywood mythology, for the spectacle of its excess, and for the suffocating hierarchies that govern who belongs and who does not. That tension animates the show, and also exposes its unevenness.

The premise of the Prime Video series Do You Wanna Partner promises fizz: two women dare to launch a craft beer start-up in Delhi, taking on the boys’ club of the alcobev industry. Shikha (Tamannaah Bhatia) and Anahita (Diana Penty) are best friends who set out to build their own brewery. Shikha is fuelled by the unrealised dream of her late father, Sunjoy (Indraneil Sengupta). Sunjoy’s beer brand Gondogol was snatched away by businessman Vikram Walia (Neeraj Kabi, sporting a Cruella-inspired hairdo to suggest a villainous streak). Anahita is the pragmatic financial anchor, Shikha’s often lonely partner-in-entrepreneurship who is overcoming her own issues with being taken seriously at work.

Inspector Zende, written and directed by Chinmay Mandlekar, announces itself as “a story inspired by true events that looks like a fairy tale”. It’s meant as parody, not fact, but even judged on those terms, the film struggles. International Indian-Vietnamese criminal Charles Sobhraj has previously been captured in filmed entertainment in Black Warrant, Main Aur Charles and The Serpent, while Madhukar Zende, who gained national fame after the famous arrest of Sobhraj in Goa, was also the subject of a 2023 documentary called Zende. Mandlekar’s Netflix film opens in Bombay, 1986, but the characters refer to the city as Mumbai, the first of many period inconsistencies since the city’s name didn’t officially change till 1995. The film reimagines Charles Sobhraj, the notorious 1970s conman and serial killer, as Carl Bhojraj (Jim Sarbh). In 1986, Sobhraj, or in this case Bhojraj, escaped from Tihar Jail after drugging duty officers and slipping out with four fellow inmates. Enter Inspector Zende (Manoj Bajpayee), the cop who once arrested the international criminal in 1971, and is now tasked with bringing him in again.

The Roses is director Jay Roach and screenwriter Tony McNamara’s reimagining of the 1989 film The War of the Roses, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in an untamed marital war. In the 2025 version, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman take on the marital troubles of a modern couple in this black comedy that feels at once familiar and also entirely new. Ivy Rose (Colman) and Theo Rose (Cumberbatch), negotiate the challenges of professional and personal life as they move from unshakable love to complete hatred. The Roses’ love story starts just as impulsively as it ends—passionate, spontaneous, till death do them part. She’s a chef, he’s an architect. They move from the UK to California to explore and expand their creativity.

Richard Osman’s 2020 novel The Thursday Murder Club soon became a runaway bestseller and a book-club favourite. Its delightful premise follows four older residents living at Cooper Chase, an expansive English retirement home, who meet weekly to discuss unsolved crimes—only to find themselves entangled in a real-life murder investigation. Osman’s novel balanced wit, warmth and intricate plotting to create a clever and endearing mystery, drawing readers into piecing together clues from a wide field of suspects. The film adaptation, written by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote and directed by Chris Columbus (on Netflix) embraces the same charming setup but inevitably takes a different route. The heart of the story—the idea of senior citizens becoming unlikely detectives—remains intact. The setup too remains playful and refreshing, as older characters take the spotlight in a genre usually dominated by hardened investigators, somewhat like Only Murders in the Building but with only senior sleuths, and set in an English retirement home rather than an American apartment block.

In Tehran, director Arun Gopalan adapts the high-stakes geopolitics of 2012 into a tense espionage drama. The film’s premise is rooted in a real incident: the February 2012 bomb attack near the Israeli Embassy in Delhi, part of a coordinated series of assaults on Israeli diplomats in Georgia, Thailand, and India. Based on a story written by Bindi Karia, with screenplay and dialogues by Karia and Ritesh Shah, the film uses that flashpoint as the launchpad for a fictional covert mission that spans continents and moral boundaries. At the heart of the narrative is ACP Rajiv Kumar, known as RK (John Abraham), a Delhi police officer described as obsessive by nature and a loose cannon. At the start of the film, RK is focussed on bringing down the Makwana gang, which has threatened his family. But after the bombing of the Israeli diplomat’s car, RK is assigned to investigate the attack. The deadly car-bombing sequence—executed with emotional, dramatic and cinematic intensity—sets off RK’s vendetta. As the mission stretches from Delhi to Georgia, the UK, Abu Dhabi, and finally to Tehran, it becomes clear that this is not just a spy game—it’s about the messy entanglements of global politics, energy deals, and fractured alliances.

The Telugu show Arabia Kadali takes viewers on a sweeping maritime journey through the lives of fishermen caught in the net of geopolitics. The Prime Video series from Krish Jagarlamudi and Chintakindi Srinivas Rao spans eight episodes and covers over a year. Directed by VV Surya Kumar, Arabia Kadali explores what happens when men from rival villages are forced to depend on each other after being captured in foreign waters and incarcerated in a hostile environment. The story centres on Badiri (Satyadev) and the struggles of other local fishermen like him. The coastal villages of Andhra Pradesh are in crisis. The once-bountiful Bay of Bengal has been overfished and polluted. There’s no jetty or proper boats. The fishermen migrate to Gujarat for long weeks at sea as hired hands on company fishing boats. The lure of the Arabian Sea’s richness draws them further westward. What begins as a desperate mission for livelihood turns into a nightmare when the fishermen inadvertently cross into Pakistani waters and are arrested on the charge of being Indian spies.