Who are Abhi and Siddhu and why is this on-screen couple the subject of much online discussion?
If you have been watching Tamil web-series Vallamai Tharayo , billed as India’s first daily digital series, on YouTube every evening, you would know why.
Starring Shali Nivekas, VJ Parvathy, Kaushick and Vivek Rajagopal among others,
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“It is an endorsement of a digital product by TV media. We wanted the edginess of a digital series without missing the core of television,” says B Srinivasan of the Vikatan Group, which made the series with Motion Content Group, in association with YouTube. To ensure a perfect marriage of the two platforms, they roped in V Thiruselvam, who helmed the successful TV soap
The heart of the series deals with patriarchy;
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One of the reasons for that, according to him, is the casting. “Before we started out, we roped in many known faces from YouTube,” he reveals, “We were particular not to cast people who were popular due to their TV appearances as we wanted the look and feel to be that of a web-series.”
The core storyline of Vallamai Tharayo was conceived by Srinivasan’s wife Radhika, after being inspired by Chup , a collection of interviews by Deepa Narayanan that speaks about how patriarchy has seeped into the Indian woman. “We are now also in talks with Malayalam channels for a similar move like the Telugu one, and also with Hindi producers and channels to remake this in Hindi,” adds Srinivasan, who has also produced November Story for Disney+Hotstar.