Tag: TV Serials

At this stage on my life, I have the luxury of having time on my hands. This led me to seeing a lot of television serials. It was from a show Sunday Brunch with Sushmita Sen by Kamiya Jani of Curly Tales fame that I first got to know of Sushmita Sen’s venturing into her digital debut. Naturally, we knew of her as Miss Universe 1994 and a Bollywood actress after that.

“Aarya” the serial she starred in as the female lead got her the award for Best Actress Female at the Filmfare OTT Awards. The serial got much acclaim running for 3 whole seasons. These had 25 episodes fwhich aired from 2020 to 2024. A nomination for the International Emmy Awards for Best Drama series followed.

I was prompted to watch Aarya on JioHotstar. Watching this in 2025, I certainly had a lot of catching up to do! I soon got pretty interested in the show and saw all 3 seasons over several months. Sometimes I saw many episodes together, at other times there was along gap and I had to figure out where I had left off in the rather complex story. The story was interesting. I heard it was adapted from a Dutch drama series.

In my view, Sushmita acted well overall in a role which suited her- suave and sophisticated . Yet the story line seemed uncharacteristic of her – transitioning from being a home maker and mother of three kids to being a drug smuggling don. After an excellent start in Season 1, I saw a sameness in her acting. I wish she had been shown to be more vulnerable- and therefore more human! Her pet theme that mothers would go to any extent to protect their children rang hollow after some time. Yes, they would by and large! However, how many mothers would they take up drug smuggling in a big way in association with international gangs? How many mothers would kill or get people killed left and right?

It is true that in life some people do get good breaks from time to time. In this series all the chips were in Aarya Sareen’s favour . Episode after episode saw her win against the hapless ACP Khan. One felt almost sorry for the bumbling Khan – the last straw being that even Aarya’s kids called him by name as if he was some domestic servant of theirs and not a senior officer of the Narcotics Control Bureau. To add insult to injury, the director dwelt at length about Khan’s personal life which ultimately didn’t add any value to the story one way or the other. In another surprise, I thought the director was silent on the real story between the ever faithful Daulat and Aarya.

The violence and gore quotient was quite high all through the series but that was only to be expected. The story was gripping in many parts and the photography and screen play was of a consistent high standard.

If you like action packed thrillers, you will enjoy watching Aarya. Naturally, I have not spoken much about the story. Be prepared for some amount of complexity with many characters in the fray.