Features Kay Kay Menon, Nawazuddin Siddiqui too.
By Tathagata Mitra
BANGALORE: Amitabh Bachchan’s Kaun Banega Crorepati, first for Star Plus and now for Sony has been one of Indian television’s most popular non-fiction show. Now, the Shahenshah of Bollywood is all set to star in his first ever fictional TV series.
The series is being created and produced by Anurag Kashyap and has been titled ‘Yudh’ after Bachchan’s character in the series, Yudhisthir Skarwar. The first look of the film was launched on May 31.
The series is to premiere on Sony, which also broadcasts Bachchan’s KBC. The premise of this series has been summarized as, “A story of a man who is invincible. It is the journey of a man and his struggle with his collapsing health, his battle with business rivals and his complicated family equations. It is journey to emerge as a winner despite all odds.”
From the look of it, the show will have a very dark and grim tone, one that echoes in several of Kashyap’s works, like Dev D and Black Friday. Bachchan seems to be a playing an old man with evergreen spirit, as can be gathered from his appearance in the first promo of the series. We also get a glimpse of other actors like Sarika, Kay Kay Menon and Nawazuddin Siddiqui in the series. Nawazuddin is collaborating with Kashyap for the first time since Gangs of Wasseypur, which, together with Kahaani had turned him into a household name.
This TV series by Kashyap is a far cry from the daily soap operas that go on endlessly for years. Sony has been known for broadcasting quite a few of these ‘parallel TV series’ which were all a limited time venture but were of a much more higher standard in terms of quality. Before ‘Yudh’, Sony had produced a lot of quality television collaborating with YRF Television, a subsidiary of Yash Raj films.
Some of the shows created were Kismat (a take on Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel), Powder (a story about cops and drug lords set in Mumbai), Rishta.com (a comedy on two unlikely partners running a matrimonial service), Seven (a superhero tale based on the ancient texts), Mahi Way (a romantic comedy with an unlikely protagonist in the lead), and Khotey Sikkey (a story about an unlikely gang of misfits and a driven cop).