Smorgasbord Fantasia

It's that time of the year when you sit up and realize yet another year has rocketed past you!  But this year has been at least, a fairly soul-satisfying one for me, from a creative pursuits point of view. My writings are not been dead - I have finished rewriting about forty-thousand words of my previous manuscript with some solid new storylines which I think, is promising. Got a bite from an agent even! Took active participation in some writing contests, did a few nice short stories, even won an award for one of those shorts. The most soul-crushing aspect of publishing journey, which is the querying phase is on now and the agent research is in full swing now. So hey, not bad at all in terms of reviving that flagging part of my tired soul which had been caged up for like two three years past!  So coming to the topic I wanted to write on, the Best TV Shows for this year 2023 - I will run past a few of my favorites that I finally came around to watching, not necessarily released...

For ages, we have been pining for that huge gap in our lives left by the excellent Game of Thrones ( minus that terrible ending, of course!) and Amazon Prime has been trying hard, to get us hooked onto multiple different options. The grandest of them all, is of course The Wheel of Time currently running on Prime ( more on this later!) but we've seen a few more ambitious attempts.  Carnival Row - Season I (2019) falls somewhere right in the middle. Luscious worldbuilding, fantastic visuals that looks like a Dickensian Fever Dream, earnest performances and an overstuffed ambitious storyline.  Does it qualify to fill in that void? Nope, not by a long measure. but by itself, without drawing comparisons, Carnival Row is not a bad series at all, headlined by Orlando Bloom and several others playing key roles in the first season.  The story is a gas-lamp fantasy set in a world populated by both humans and the ‘fairyland residents, ‘fae”. As the story opens, the fairyland has be...

Marvel's new set up on TV has kinda been a mixed bag for me. I never did get around to watching the WandaVision/ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was great in parts but overall disappointing. Which is probably why I am pinning my hopes on this next one, out in June.  Loki gets an entire series for himself - and there's this new storyline about the TimeKeepers ( in trademark Loki style, there's a lot of wit, action and backstabbing!) that seems pretty kickass. And then there is Owen Wilson!! Woot-Woot! 

 Oct 23rd will see the goons of Mirzapur take over Amazon prime in India, once again. ( Oh it's so happening now, am guessing!) Season - II premieres on the platform and Prime is pinning its hopes on this ultra-violent, gripping series focused on the caste-and-politics based violence of the UP Hinterlands to bring an extra shine to their overall festive season dominance.  I managed to just about catch up on Season-I on time before the new season arrives - and while it may have its flaws in being morally decadent and perhaps a  questionable story-telling style etc, I was frankly hooked on to this. For a good day and a half, over the weekend. I literally 'binged" on the nine 45-minutes long episodes of the first season, hanging on for dear life as the businessmen, politicians and the goons played havoc with each others life, each episode layered on with enough profanity, gratuitous violence and sex to last TV viewers for a full two years ( This first season released in 2...

Amazon Prime , for long has been trying to outdo the frenzied success that Sacred Games brought for Netflix India . They finally might have found one. In Pataal Lok , produced by Anushka Sharma, directed by Sudip Sharma. Set in the seedier outlands of Delhi ( Outer Jamnaa Paar )  Pataal Lok is a black noir thriller with mythological overtones, focused on the efforts of a down-on-his-luck honest but cynical cop, Hathi Ram Chaudhary's attempts to unravel the mystery behind a failed assassination attempt of a high-profile journalist. It succeeds at different levels, often because of the realistic treatment of the issues of casteism, racial prejudices and the political machinations that is weaved into the crime-narrative, rather than be just backdrops against which typically such crimes flourish. While the first couple of episodes lays the foundation for an intriguing mystery and assuredly plumbs the seedier parts of a Delhi, we have never seen really, the series truly soars -...

So, doing my bit to alleviate some amount of boredom out there. I know, some folks have been coming back to me and saying, how much can I watch Desperate Housewives or Friends or Big Bang Theory re-runs on TV/ Netflix. So, here's another one of those lists ( I know! there are so many floating around!) which will hopefully make your life easier, as you aimlessly surf through the truckloads of content on your Netflix subscription. I am not okay with this ( Teenage Drama ) - Bite-sized episodes at less than 30 minutes, this one follows the life of a self-proclaimed introverted 'loser' teenage white girl who suddenly discovers strange new things happening in her life, including changes to her body. And it isn't just hormones. It's such a refreshing reversal on the teenage drama tropes, I absolutely loved it. Kingdom ( Zombie/ Korean / Period) - Koreans make the best zombie movies/series ever. Period. [ Pun, coz this is set in the historical Kingdom at p...

Alan Moore's greatest project, Watchmen - possibly one of the best graphic novels/ comics ever written still continues to be ultra-relevant and topical as we are living in the middle of the one of the turbulent politically unstable times ever. I loved the graphic novel and the movie, I thought wasn't too shabby either. But I wasn't a fan-boy. No sir, not until Damon Lindelof ( creator of the one of the most successful longest running telly-series Lost and the critically acclaimed but criminally underrated Leftovers ) brought to HBO, this amazing companion sequel to the main movie/comic. Which in my humble opinion, is undoubtedly the greatest show running on TV today. It is set in an alternate America, more specifically, a small town in Oklahoma called Tulsa. Which is a microcosm of modern America filled with masked vigilantes ( pitted against masked policemen, empowered by the ludicrous sounding DOPA - Defence of Police Act, that lets the police force use  violen...

So I finally managed to wrap up Stranger Things - 3!  Phew. Going to be frank, the third season ends spectacularly well - but it was a real slog to get through the initial four-five episodes till things really got going. The producers/writers/director team have crammed in all things good from the previous seasons, cranked up the horror elements dial to beyond eleven (Pun!), thrown in some really messy, gory ingredients, stretched out a non-existent plot line to cover up gaping holes in the scripts but ultimately. reach the finish line, spewing exhaust and grit, grime and gore all over the place in a final blaze of well deserved glory. So cut to the chase: It's 1985. Hawkins is still a pin prick in the Great American Hinterland, the idealistic town in the middle of nowhere but now, the kerbside shops are giving way to the Great Mall of Starcourt. The kids have hit their teenage big time and thus, have their hormones raging. Mike and El are going at it, non stop disco...

The Marvel universe within Netflix is hinged around this blind man, who knows no fear and is fighting tooth and nail everyday to save his city, Hell's Kitchen, either from mysterious ninja-gods or larger-than-life villains orchestrating moves from within prison walls. And I daresay, Season 3 is a welcome comeback for Daredevil , possibly the best outing yet. In many ways - bringing us back to the streets of Hell's Kitchen that becomes the bloody chess-board for a game of cat and mouse, between the Devil and hold your breath, the Kingpin [ The villain we love!] and the introduction of Bullseye as the King's daring key-piece to upset the whole board. See, apart from Daredevil, the other "superheroes" haven't really set our pulses racing quite like Matt Murdoch 's alter-ego. There's something heart-breaking and immensely loveable about Charlie Cox 's brilliant portrayal of this vulnerable man, questioning his faith in God and his own abiliti...

Sacred Games was released on July 6th on Netflix India and a mere six days later I think this series has hit a cult status and following. It is definitely one of the sharpest originally 'made for India' content that I have seen in years and while yes, there is a lot of hype for the heavyweight names associated with Bollywood getting down and dirty on the small screen, I think it is all justified and totally worth it. Is it India's answer to hit international web series, like Narcos or Marco Polo? I think we shall soon find out the numbers. But it is definitely opened the floodgates for Netflix India, in terms of the awareness and its war-cry in this brutal 'content' game up against the stalwarts like Amazon Prime. So Sacred Games is directed by two stalwarts of the industry, A nurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur and many more acclaimed movies) and V ikramaditya Motwane ( Udaan, Lootera) and stars Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddique and Radhika Apte in key ro...

I recently finished binge-watching  the vastly popular and extremely thrilling Stranger Things on Netflix - Set in the cozy nostalgic 80's, in a small town in Pennsylvania, US in late Nov'83, the series explores the themes of supernatural horror and the amazing endurance power of the human spirit. Paying homage to the nerdy pop-culture of the 80's ( Hell, the series-premiere starts off with the eleven-year old boys playing Dungeons and Dragons in full earnest!) Stranger Things is one of the most original series, from the Netflix stables ever, I think. A gripping mystery that blows up into creepy horror that really fucks with your mind with a propulsive story-telling that is almost pitch-perfect. Notice, I said almost ? So I went absolutely  nuts over the first season. Blowing through the eight episodes in less than a week, I felt like Netflix finally got over this habit of hooking us in, with an irresistible opening bait and premise, that ultimately leads to dis...

After Daredevil Season 2, I haven’t binge-watched a series like I did, for Punisher . Maybe because it is interconnected and after the soaring highs and the nerve-wracking tension meted out for Daredevil , I knew this was not to be missed out. So we switch back to Jon Bernthal once again. Jesus, this man. What a fine understated actor. We have see the animal grunts, the unflinching blows, the crackling guns and the exploding bombs, the gushing blood and the bruised broken purplish skin. But in a series completed headlined by him, Jon shows that he can swing either extremes. To be the tender caring lover or the sensitive dad or the faithful friend. He can emote through the whole spectrum of roles and this time, he carries the series masterfully through – punching, gasping, kicking and coughin blood yes as we would expect him to, but the quieter, contemplative avatar, we love more. Punisher, after having gunned down all the biker gangs and armed convicts in Hell’s Kitchen that ...

Just finished the final episode of Daredevil Season 2 from Netflix . And I am in bit of a dilemma, as to whether I liked it better than the first season or not. After much deliberation with the magic of that brilliant finale fading from my memory, I decide, not. So, the Man who knows no fear, the masked vigilante who's  so in love with his city, Hell's Kitchen of New York is back cleaning up the streets at night, after having put his biggest nemesis, Wilson Fiske behind the bars in that stunning first season - that impressed the shit out of me, as a viewer. In fact, I remember I had binge-watched the same , back to back, night after night and couldn't wait for Season-2. Now, that I am finally done with it, though, I cannot say I feel the same level of breathless, frenetic enthusiasm for the franchise. This is not to say, that the Season 2 wasn't great. It was more of a see-saw for me - and the giant void left by the exit of Daredevil's biggest villain, Wils...