Aryan Khan’s series is an insider look at the industry he grew up in, and in striving to poke fun and tell the truth at the same time, he doesn’t shy away from the nepo baby discourse.
It’s hard to talk about the current state of the Hindi film industry, commonly referred to as “Bollywood,” without mentioning nepotism. Most of the biggest names in the industry today have had a leg up getting there: Ananya Panday, Janhvi Kapoor, and Sara Ali Khan, to name a few, are all relatives of established stars in front of and behind the camera. Netflix India’s latest series The Ba***ds of Bollywood is no different, it comes from the son of arguably the biggest actor in the world Shah Rukh Khan.
But Aryan Khan’s series is an insider look at the industry he grew up in, and in striving to poke fun and tell the truth at the same time, he doesn’t shy away from the nepo baby discourse. Instead, the series goes all in on it starting with a roundtable discussion in the pilot in which main character Aasmaan drills fellow actress Karishma Talwar about being born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
Khan, who is Karishma’s avatar and could have taken the easy way out to defend his nepo baby status which got him this Netflix deal in the first place, is surprisingly level headed in the merits and detractions of growing up in the spotlight. The result sets the tone for his writing and directorial debut, marking him refreshingly self-aware.
His lineage is not the only autobiographical detail that made it into the show. His infamous drug possession scandal, in which he was detained for almost a month and denied bail multiple times, also makes it into the series even if it’s not a central focus of the show. There’s no doubt that Khan will have a specific point of view on the matter within his fictional world, but that he’s able to include it and (hopefully) joke about it is promising.
The series only falters in the occasional mismatch of tone, which becomes more pronounced as the series goes on. The Ba***ds of Bollywood is initially satirical in nature but often drops into a “filmi” register (meaning it falls back on the heightened dramatics expected in Indian content). When fictional industry titan Ajay Talwar (certainly modeled after Khan’s father) is introduced, the camera takes care to show every bulging muscle in every angle possible, as if this is a Bollywood film Talwar is starring in.
He’s portrayed as a God, seemingly the exact opposite of the show’s ethos. Later, in the series, there is a bar fight in which the hero beats up the people in complete bollywood style. There have been mixed opinions that if the show wants to explore the film industry and its characters, it would have been better to stick to a consistent satirical tone.
However, Aryan’s writing and directing is impressive and appreciable. The Ba***ds of Bollywood is daring, insightful, and playful about the only world he knows.
