Sameer Nair feels Indian adaptation of The Office would do far better today: ‘Market was smaller then, wanted to do 11 seasons like US'

Indian Express

19 hours ago

Sameer Nair enjoys a unique lens on the Indian entertainment landscape. From his first stint at Star when nascent Indian television was opening its arms to shows from the West to now adapting successful series from around the world into enduring Indian originals, he's come a long way. In an exclusive interview with SCREEN, the Managing Director of Applause Entertainment talks about the current streaming scene, adapting shows from Indian books and shows in other languages, and navigating the algorithm of a range of OTT platforms.
Pankaj Tripathi told us he's been showing off that Criminal Justice started as an adaptation in India, but has now taken a life of its own. It has outlasted its original British version by two seasons. How did you achieve that?
At that time, we'd seen both the original British version and the American adaptation, The Night Of. It was a very strong, powerful show, so we got the rights. We were working with BBC as they were trying to pitch it in India. We stayed true to both the shows. There's a lawyer character in both, who's a bit morose, eccentric, down on his luck, like a loser. We wrote the character in a similar manner. We made a few changes to the story for India. We didn't make our central character Muslim. We made him into a Hindu boy so that it becomes really middle-of-the-plate. It could happen to anyone. So we cast (Vikrant Massey) around it.
The happy surprise of season 1 was that when Pankaj brought on the lawyer's role and started essaying it, he brought a mischief to Madhav Mishra. That was not there in either of the shows. He wasn't funny or smiling. We quite liked that. The Americans never did season 2, only the British did. But when we were doing season 2, we decided to take the Madhav Mishra forward, but stick to the original story of that season. By season 3, we'd got our own Lincoln Lawyer going. Pankaj has also come into his own. It's a character he lives and owns. Interestingly enough, the character remains the humble everyman desi guy. He's not become arrogant.
At a time when streaming is facing challenges at multiple levels, do you think adapting a show and building an original franchise out of it is the way to go?
It's being done. We ourselves have done Tanaav (on SonyLIV), which has been adapted from Fauda (Israeli show on Netflix). We did Your Honor (SonyLIV), another Israeli show, which was later done in America with Bryan Cranston. So, adapting is a common enough thing in the whole world. There's nothing new with it. Vishal Bhardwaj has made a whole range of Shakespeare stories (Maqbool, Omkara, Haider). Martin Scorsese has won his only Academy Award for The Departed (2006), which is an adaptation of the Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs (2002). There are some stories in a particular context and language, that have a certain core, which should be told again in different places, worlds, milieus, and cultures. We used to rip it off earlier. Now, we get the legitimate rights. The only way you can keep stories and morals of those stories alive is by retelling them. You can't tell a human a story once and expect generations to remember it. That's why the Ramayana and the Mahabharata keep getting remade with new interpretations. It's not a formula, it's just a good thing to do.
Along with Criminal Justice, you also adapted The Office in 2020. Do you think that couldn't sustain because of the high recall value that the American version has till today?
No, I think we did a really good job. The British made 18 episodes, the Americans made 187 episodes! I love the Americans for that, they really take things ahead. We made a good two seasons. Maybe at that time, the market was much smaller. Today, now that you have 300 million customers on JioHotstar, The Office will do really well. The team keeps calling me and asking when we're going to do season 3 because even the version we made was really liked. A show that was set in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is outside New York, we based it in Faridabad, but it still works. A sleepy office with nobody working, a crazy boss — it's a universal emotion. Even Gopal Dutt's character, with all his quirks, really took off! I feel bad we didn't do more of it. We also wanted to do 11 seasons.
You also adapted Idris Elba's Luther into Rudra: The Edge of Darkness with Ajay Devgn in 2022. Do you think a star of his stature hasn't worked in a show before and since because the economics of that doesn't work out on streaming?
Yes, I think so. When it released, it was a blowout hit. It was really successful, the most watched show on Hotstar till now, when Criminal Justice season 4 has come along. But now, you're talking about JioHotstar, it's a much bigger base. Rudra was really big for its time. It's the economics, the ROI, it was also early days of streaming, there are moving parts to this. Ajay did a fantastic job. He's a great actor. Like Luther, we got the edge about Rudra right. Ajay had already seen that show and loved it, so he wanted it to work.
Aamir Khan recently argued while adapting the 2018 Spanish film Campeones into Sitaare Zameen Par that not a lot of Indians would watch the original Spanish movie. Do you think it benefits you more if you adapt from an Israeli show, as opposed to an English show, since English is a far more accessible language in India?
I think it's the same. Streaming is everywhere now, and the audience is happily consuming content in other languages also. When you adapt something, you're not doing just because no one else has seen it here. Of course, a smaller audience has seen it, and there's still a larger one available to see it. But you also adapt because you believe it's a story that must be retold, in you own way. We've done adaptations of obscure shows, like Mithya (2022, ZEE5) made from Australian show called Cheat. But no one has seen it, forget just the English-speaking audience. But it's a story worthy of retelling and it's resonated with audiences everywhere.
You have also adapted books, like Scam 1992 (adapted from Sucheta Dalal and Debashish Basu's book The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away) and Black Warrant (adapted from Sunetra Choudhury and Sunil Kapoor's 2019 book). Do you think streaming and creators aren't banking enough on the rich Indian literature we have out there?
Well, we are. We're doing quite a bit of these. Like our recent SonyLIV show, Nagesh Kukunoor's The Hunt – The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case is adapted from Anirudhya Mitra's book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assasins, which was written just one-and-a-half years ago. It's important to tell stories of contemporary history. A lot of the mythology and historicals you see on Indian streaming these days are also based on some book or similar source material. But when you're adapting it, you don't have to copy it verbatim. For example, when we did Scam 1992, we called it specifically The Harshad Mehta Story. Because it was a much wider book. It becomes hard to go as wide in a series so we focused on one part of it. If you want to know about the whole scam, go read the book.
The third season of Scam is based on the late Sahara chief Subroto Roy. Since you were in the same industry as him, have you had any personal interactions with him?
I think everybody has. We'll be hard-pressed to find a single human being who hasn't interacted with him. But again, it's a very fascinating story. We don't approach stories like these in a scandalous or malicious way. The core of that franchise is that there are really smart, intelligent, ambitious people who are often failed by the system so they bend that system and achieve a lot till they fly too close to the sun. So we're always interested in telling human stories, what was happening in India in their time, what made them do what they did, how they did it.
Did you expect Vikramaditya Motwane's Black Warrant to break out like it did and get renewed for another season?
We worked really hard on it. But the real validation came from the audience. If I try to explain the show, it'd seem like it's about the dark underbelly of Tihar Jail. But what we were making was a young adult workplace drama. It's just not Procter & Gamble, it's Tihar Jail. They're not MBAs, they just come from different backgrounds. Creators are often telling stories in a particular way, but it's only when the audience syncs that you make magic. We live a very dangerous life in our business.
You've also adapted Ramachandra Guha's books for Hansal Mehta and Prateik Gandhi's show on Mahatma Gandhi. What new would these series offer than what we've already seen in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982)?
Attenborough's Gandhi is just three hours long. But you're telling a full life, and what a life! That film doesn't even have Subhash Chandra Bose and BR Ambedkar as characters. It's obviously iconic, a great movie for its time, and put India on the world map. But we believe the series format allows us to tell a richer story, to talk about what was going around at that time. It's not a fair comparison, but this is like our Crown. In 2-3 seasons, we aim to tell the story of Gandhi, of our Independence struggle, and of all the people who were involved in it, and not just Gandhi. Obviously, he becomes a name to symbolize it with because he's the guy on our currency notes, but there were so many people who worked with him on all sides, whether for or against. Then of course, as like with any story, with a historical also, you can reinterpret it for a new audience. Again, Gandhi is like a young adult story. It's not that old man you see with a shawl and a stick. This is a young guy who goes to London to study. He's actually India's first NRI since he stayed in South Africa for 25 years and then came back to India. Nowadays, they work in Silicon Valley and then come back to India, like Swades (2004) was.
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Since you've worked with a range of Indian streaming platforms, how do you wrap your head around the algorithms of each?
Actually, a lot of this is also a little bit of common sense and a little bit of common knowledge. Usually, when people tend to like one kind of show, they tend to like more of the same. That's why there's that icon which says, 'You May Also Like.' Franchises like Criminal Justice work well because you've primed the audience for the kind of stories, characters, and adventures. They almost market themselves, like superhero movies. In terms of genre, there are some which may work better than the other, but we don't break our shows into genres. All shows are dramas. They're human beings interacting with each other. For instance, this is an interview. But if you shoot me, it becomes a crime drama. Everyone loves crime because that's one thing you're too scared to do yourself. So there's a voyeuristic feel to it. You're always drawn to seeing someone else commit a crime. Then you look for closure in the form of justice. So you like crime because you can't do it.