The Streaming Show

What’s it like being an established actor in 2024? What’s it like navigating and bouncing between shows and films, platforms and mediums, theatrical and streaming? 

To shed light on just that, for the season finale of The Streaming Show podcast, I spoke to Jim Sarbh. It feels like the talented actor has been everywhere over the last few years. On streaming, we’ve seen him on popular shows like Four More Shots Please, the beloved Made In Heaven, and one of my favourites Rocket Boys for which he even bagged an international Emmy nomination. 

He also recently started his own YouTube series Crew Cut, which I strongly recommend, in which popular actors interview the storytellers and artists behind the scene about the craft of filmmaking. 

Jim spoke to me about the ongoing …often soul crushing conflict between an actor and artist wanting to do good work as against the constant calculations of playing the positioning and perception game. Along with the current slump and uncertainty within the film industry, flitting between Shakespeare and playing the villain in his first Telugu film, his thoughts on the talent management ecosystem and a whole lot more.

You cant really tell the Indian streaming story without talking to Sid Roy Kapur. One of the most respected producers in the business, he’s backed more than 80 films according to his IMDB, including gems like Dangal, Barfi, Udaan, Paan Singh Tomar, and Haider.

It’s a pretty bleak time for the Indian streaming landscape, to put it lightly. I’ve spoken to writers who’ve said they’ve never seen the industry in such bad shape. You hear constant horror stories these days. Everything from platforms no longer commissioning shows, to shows in development or even about to start production which are either shelved or facing drastically reduced budgets. And these are big, well-known filmmakers and writers. So how bad is it and is there any hope in sight?

To break it down, I spoke to one of the most significant storytelling voices we have. Sudip Sharma is the creator of Paatal Lok and Kohrra. He’s one of the few true blue showrunners we have - a writer who’s stepped up and become captain of the ship of his shows. Sudip spoke to me about the crippling uncertainty of the current streaming landscape for writers, the calibre of stories on streaming, his experiences of working with Netflix vs Amazon Prime Video, his advice for young writers trying to weather the current storm, and what the future of long-form storytelling looks like in India.

What exactly does an effective writers' room look like, and have we adopted the concept well within the Indian streaming ecosystem? Or is it still a free-for-all with everyone just doing their own thing? To break it down I spoke to two of the most exciting screenwriters in town, both of whom bring new meaning to the term multihyphenate talent. 

Varun Grover was head writer in one of the first writers rooms for a major streamer with Sacred Games. Aside from creating and starring in Prime Video’s Pushpavalli, one of the finest shows we’ve made, Sumukhi Suresh recently founded MotorMouth - a company solely dedicated to writing and developing shows and movies. At MotorMouth, Sumukhi is currently juggling 8 separate writers rooms at once. 

In a hilarious, insightful chat, the two sparking screenwriters spoke to me about the do’s and don'ts of running a writers' room, bringing together the right group of personalities, why writers fighting can actually be a good thing, what the job of a head writer is, how young writers can deal with asshole bosses and toxic power structures, the insanity of writers being banned on sets and the surprising significance of Bengali food. 

This season of The Streaming Show podcast was only ever supposed to be ten episodes. But in a happy turn of events, this 11th episode materialized in which I spoke to one of my favorite artists Vir Das - about a topic I feel very strongly about - the lack of comedies on streaming and why there seems to be a fear of funny among platforms. Shows like Amazon's glorious Pushpavalli and Humble Politician Nograj on Voot remain the rare exceptions.

Vir spoke to me about the severe lack of laughs, the multiple shows he’s currently show running,

the need for more platform executives who understand comedy, what went wrong with his Netflix series Hasmukh and what streaming has done for stand-up and vice versa.