If Indian television is the East of personal entertainment and the web series culture is the West, as per tradition, the twain shall never meet.
The urban Indian youth with their high speed internet connections are barely tuning into television and loathe the typical serials and soaps. Casual chats with many in this demographic reveal that apart from tuning into the news and watching an occasional movie, they don’t have much use for their TV sets. But they do love web series and devouring one after another has become their way of life. Here’s a look at a few new age web series that are truly defining the genre.
TVF’s Pitchers
TVF’s previous online series Permanent Roommates caught a million eyeballs and now they have a new show titled Pitchers. This new one is not a pure comedy unlike TVF’s other stuff and revolves around four guys launching their own startup. The episodes are first released on TVF Play and later on YouTube.
Contrary to a lot of people’s assumption, TVF play is not replacing YouTube for TVF. We just wanted to have a platform where a fan could get easy access to all the content which not only we have made, but also which we love to watch. Meanwhile we will continue to put our content out on youtube as well for our million plus subscriber base.
– Amit Golani, TVF’s Executive Creative Head
Sponsors are roped in for the series and endorsements are cleverly scripted into the show. AIB and TVF are leading the game in the viral space so far, as pointed out in a recent PTI report. While AIB is not in the fiction web series foray yet, it did break the internet with the infamous Roast!
Pechkas Pictures & ScoopWhoop’s Baked
Moving away from content curation, ScoopWhoop has acquired an original production called Baked. This stoner comedy series is about three Delhi University students, who start a late night food delivery service called Wake and Bake. Largely drawn from the creators’ own experiences, the show is hilariously realistic.
I am not much for doomsday prophecies but I suppose TV will have to find a way to remain relevant in the future. As access to internet grows and becomes easier and better for everybody in India and more and more people get on it, TV will have to morph itself to fit in with the internet rather than be completely outside of it.
– Vishwajoy Mukerjee, Director of Baked
Graphic India’s 18 Days
A beautifully animated 2013 web series narrates stories from the Mahabharata in clever 5 minute clips. Kurukshetra is interestingly reimagined by comic book legend Grant Morrison. Check out more about the series here.
There’s a distinct lack of female protagonists in these shows so far. Barring Shekhar Kapur’s Devi, that was also hosted by Graphic India (where Devi is obviously sexualised) there isn’t much women driven content.
Ekta Kapoor tried her hand at producing web series too with Bol Niti Bol in 2010. Let’s just say it wan’t much fun. The K-serial behemoths should stick to TV for now. But the emerging blue ocean of web series is a challenging one with endless possibilities and restless attention spans of its young audience.
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