Visibly inauthentic, miserably miscast, and saddled with a problematic perspective that makes Indians seem like outsiders in their own country, the sprawling television adaptation of the novel Shantaram is Apple TV+’s second major misfire of the year after WeCrashed. This is especially disappointing when you consider that the streamer has had an extraordinary year otherwise, with hit after hit after hit that might not have seeped into cultural consciousness, but remain among the year’s best shows.
- Advertisement -
In Shantaram, Charlie Hunnam stars as Lin, an Australian convict who goes on the lam and flees to India. There, he has has the adventure of a lifetime after getting mixed up with the underworld, Bollywood, and local politics. It’s a classic fish-out-water-tale, with the potential of serving as a time capsule of a nation that had just emerged from a traumatic period of unrest and was on the cusp of major economic upheaval.
In a (mildly annoying) first for the streamer, only a part of the full season was provided for preview. This was possibly done not because there are any spoilers to protect — Shantaram is, after all, based on a book — but likely to ensure that engagement doesn’t fizzle out after the three-episode premiere, and that the series sustains interest as the season goes on. Because this is the kind of middling, bloated show that needs all the help it can get; it’s certainly not going to win any fans through word-of-mouth alone. That being said, this should be considered a review of the first three episodes only. There are 12 in total, which leaves room for improvement, but also means that it can get worse.
And there isn’t much evidence in the first three chapters to suggest that Shantaram is going magically to turn into the kind of vivid, authentic period drama — a story about second chances and service — that it was perhaps always supposed to be. Based on Gregory David Roberts’ semi-autobiographical epic about life in 1980s Mumbai — or Bombay, as it was then known — Shantaram tries to retain the novel’s cinematic scope, but struggles to capture the griminess of existence on the fringes of Indian society. And that’s possibly because barely a minute of it was actually shot in India — at least as far as the early episodes are concerned.
- Advertisement -
Which presents us with a rather unique quandary: do we fault Apple for forging ahead with production despite a raging pandemic, a replaced director (?) and a showrunner switcheroo, or do we praise the streamer for overcoming the obstacles and ensuring that the series sees the light of day? This thought experiment becomes more challenging when you consider the fact that the pandemic forced the production to use Thailand as a stand-in for India instead.
But while many movies have tried to replicate India on foreign soil, Shantaram makes the fatal mistake of casting non-Indian actors in all the major speaking roles, perhaps under the impression that the target audience — white people — would not notice the difference. But let me tell you how jarring it is to not only hear characters that have no business speaking in English talk like they’ve spent two semesters at Oxford, but also to hear non-Hindi speakers trying so hard to seem like they haven’t just learned the language phonetically.
- Advertisement -
In many ways, Shantaram retains all the problems that made Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy such an exasperating experience. In fact, both shows also share a cast member, Shubham Saraf. He starred in a minor role in that adaptation of Vikram Seth’s novel, but in Shantaram — again, at least in the first three episodes — he’s the second lead. Credit where it’s due; his Indian accent is more convincing here than it was in A Suitable Boy, but it’s still a put-on job. His performance becomes more glaring when he speaks in Hindi, which, as a slum-dwelling hustler, he should ideally be doing 90% of the time. There’s also the issue of the character itself. Saraf’s Prabhu comes dangerously close to being a head-bobbing caricature, and not the self-assured, loyal friend that he should’ve been.
And then there’s Sudanese-English actor Alexander Siddig, whom you might remember as Prince Doran Martell from Game of Thrones and Ra’s al Ghul from Gotham. But as the Dongri-dwelling gangster Khader Khan in Shantaram, he’s impossible to take seriously. As a native Hindi speaker, it was almost impossible for me to decipher what he was trying to say in a couple of scenes. Let alone affecting an authentic Mumbai accent, or, to be hyper-specific, a Bhendi Bazaar accent, Siddig’s Khader Khan is difficult to categorise. The character is said to have been based on the Afghan-born Karim Lala, whom you might remember seeing in the recent Gangubai Kathiawadi, as played by Ajay Devgn. But combined with the inauthentic locations, scenes featuring him have the strange power to convince you that you’re no longer in India at all.
Incidentally, Khader Khan was supposed to be played by none other than Amitabh Bachchan when Nair — what a coincidence — was supposed to direct a film adaptation of Shantaram with Johnny Depp in the lead role. The character will have a much larger role as Lin’s mentor the season unfolds.
- Advertisement -
Which brings us to Hunnam himself. He’s someone who, like our very own Sidharth Malhotra, has been declared a movie star simply because he looks like one, and not because he has the necessary charisma. Hunnam’s Lin is hardly a street-smart hustler. Instead, the actor plays him like a runway model who lost their bags in transit. He smoulders his way in and out of scenes, and simply doesn’t have the necessary chops to be convincing in moments that require Lin to pretend like he’s someone else. Lin should have been a slippery chameleon, but in Shantaram’s (mostly fake) Mumbai gullies, he stands out like a sore thumb.
- Advertisement -
By suggesting that just about any brown-faced person can play Indians, the show is doing a disservice not only to several cultures, but also to the notion of diversity in general. And then, after having signed off on all these bad ideas, they went ahead and gave Shantaram a troubling white-saviour narrative. Not even desi ‘jugaad’ could fix this.
Shantaram
Creators – Steve Lightfoot, Eric Warren Singer
Cast – Charlie Hunnam, Shubham Saraf, Alexander Siddig, Antonia Desplat
Rating – 2/5
