Tanya and Mikesh have been in a long-distance relationship for three years now. One fine morning, Mikesh decides to come back to Mumbai from the U.S., to propose to Tanya, except Tanya doesn’t want to marry him, for she’s just realised that she barely knows him. What follows is the first season of Permanent Roommates , a web serial that is produced by The Viral Fever channel on YouTube.
Permanent Roommates has had two seasons so far. With more than a million hits on each episode, it has sparked off more YouTube web-series. These shows are all on YouTube, which means you can watch them whenever you want to. They are roughly 20 minutes long (much like any show that would normally take a half-hour slot on television), and take on themes which would be considered to be too audacious for Indian prime-time TV. Permanent Roommates , for example, takes on live-in relationships, modern friendships and pre-marital sex — themes that have been done to death on western television shows, but are refreshing to watch when presented in the Indian context. Permanent Roommates is based in Mumbai, so the characters speak in Hindi. However, the channel provides subtitles, which is a boon for the Hindi-challenged, such as myself, not to mention that it ensures that the show gets the large audience it deserves.
Another web series that I enjoyed watching is Better Life Foundation on the Them Boxer Shorts channel, also on YouTube. The series, which stars popular stand-up comedians Naveen Richard, Sumukhi Suresh, Utsav Chakraborty and Kanan Gill, among others like Kumar Varun and Sindhu Sreenivasa Murthy, is a comedy about a group of young people who run an NGO in Mumbai. The show is presented in a ‘mockumentary’ style, similar to The Office and Modern Family . The humour is very original, and the acting is spot on. I found myself actually laughing out loud many times while watching, so if you’re looking out for a new comedy series to follow, don’t look further than Better Life Foundation .
Permanent Roommates and Better Life Foundation are just the tip of the iceberg as far as Indian web series are concerned. A lot of production houses are coming up with web series that are both regional and relevant for the young audience it caters to, complete with local pop-culture references. Put Chutney, a Chennai-based YouTube channel, which rose to fame with its ‘What if Batman Was From Chennai’ video, just released its own web series called Ctrl Alt Del , which traces the life and times of IT workers in Chennai. The amount of activity in this space is exciting, and I hope that this trend manages to jolt regional serial makers from their current and seemingly never-ending themes of unnecessary sacrifice, jealousy, and vengeance, take notice of the fact that their audience’s tastes and views are changing, and finally, realise that we deserve better than feuding mothers-in-law.
