Adolescence OTT: Sudhir Mishra’s Take on Indian Viewers Is Right on the Money. Here’s Why!

The Netflix limited series Adolescence, which started off as this small TV show without much buzz (just like some of the Scottish and Irish content present on the platform), suddenly burst big, not just in Europe but across the world. Any TV show that relies on murder as a major premise will keep the mystery going until the final episode where the main culprit gets revealed.

Adolescence breaks this pattern successfully. Despite the risk of completely removing the mystery, the show successfully focusses on the "why" rather than the "how". Here, the creators have achieved significant success. Audiences are constantly looking for such disruptors in both cinema and TV – to come and change the way they look at content.

Right from the moment Adolescence was released and critics started pouring in their reviews for the show, this one aspect stood out in particular. The reviews were not about who committed the crime but about why Jamie did what he did. In no time, Adolescence emerged as a huge hit for Netflix across the world, and this show became a phenomenon even in India.

Renowned Bollywood filmmaker Sudhir Mishra expressed his joy about the popularity of shows like Adolescence in this country.

"How come Adolescence is the No. 1 show on Netflix India? Conventional wisdom strongly opposes it. Indians shouldn't have a preference for slow-burning foods. It violates every rule taught by inadequate scriptwriting schools. It spirals down instead of soaring up. It’s the best news in years," Sudhir wrote on X.

The filmmaker's intentions behind the show's success in India were subject to multiple interpretations. For years, OTT platforms have been attempting to figure out how to captivate Indian viewers with long-form content. More often than not, they have failed. While there have been mainstream hits such as The Family Man, long-form storytelling has yet to attract Indian audiences in the same way that it engages American and UK audiences.

A lot of it has got to do with our limited attention span. The advent of mobile phones has made our minds more lazy than we want to admit. We crave continuous content consumption, yet the information we receive is fleeting. In the desire to keep you hooked, social media apps have been successfully figuring out ways to give instant gratification to their users.

It's indeed a welcome sign that a small show like Adolescence received such widespread applause in India, especially in a country where attention spans are significantly decreasing due to the barrage of social media apps and the booming influencer/creator market. It gives hope to unique filmmakers like Sudhir Mishra to also convince OTT platforms to allow them to make movies their own way.

Psychologists claim that most viewers of the show sympathised with Jamie, not the girl who died. The show, which confidently addressed the toxic masculinity that's dangerously spreading across the world, managed to keep a neutral lens and not take sides. It's also important that the viewers watch the show from that perspective so that the real purpose of "Adolescence" gets served.