Ever since the OTT revolution has settled in India with the advent of Netflix and the Amazon Prime in quick succession, some of our own home grown OTT players have offered – like quality content on Voot, mixed content on Zee5, Dirty on Alt Balaji, free on MX Player and the latest entrant being Disney after the take over of Hotstar. Bandish Bandits is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Now Bandish Bandits, the latest offering on Amazon Prime is a bit refreshing, totally different from what we have got, it does not concern with patriotism, any kind of terrorism or any gangsters’ tale, it is purely about music.
A new age music maker Tamaanh (Shreya Chowdhury) is looking to create fusion music, the kind that no body has attempted yet and her ultimate dream is to collaborate with Some Queen Elli for her kind of music. She finds the perfect foil in the Jodhpur’s Rathore gharana scion Radhe who is to be initiated into higher realms of music by his grandfather Panditji (Naseeruddin Shah) a strict disciplinarian who can go to any extent to take an exam of one’s diligence.
After a Yes -no both agree to collaborate due to economic reasons and soon the in evitable happens when they fall for each other their collaboration is branded as Bandish Bandits. Though both are battling their respective demons things are working for them their preshow is a hit and things are settling but one thing leads to other things go haywire, in the meantime may other truths are revealed.
This forms the premise of this musical. Though a good attempt but could have been done more subltly and sensitively. But Bandish Bandits is a good watch with a culmination in a contest of Gharanas.
Coming back to the topic of OTT scene in India, the programming is clean, decisive, crisp and new stories. Every week or two new series come up, some begin well but whimper in between, some hold their own episode after episode. Generally each episode being anywhere between 30-50 min and 1 season containing around 8-10 episodes. The sensation started from Sacred Games, Mirzapur (people generally like bad boys) etc, then along came Asur on Voot, Patal Lok, Family man etc.. all made interesting, stories and point. In all this a couple from Mxplayer like Ek thi Begum and Bhaukaal were good too. Hundred on Disney was a bit disappointing to say the least.
– PAWAN GUPTA
Cast of Bandish Bandits:
Shreya Chaudhry
Ritwik Bhowmik
Naseeruddin Shah
Atul Kulkarni
Sheeba Chaddha
Rajesh Tailang
Amit Mistry
Credits of Bandish Bandits:
Created by Amritpal Singh Bindra, Anand Tiwari
Story and screenplay by Amritpal Singh Bindra
Directed by Anand Tiwari
Music by Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Bandish Bandits – Released on 4 August 2020 on AMAZON PRIME
