I just binged the entire 1st season of Escaype Live on Disney Plus Hotstar, thanks to a Covid and a brilliant recco by my pal Sushil Charles from Smashh 2.0.
Man oh man, have they done an EPIC job of hitting all the hard notes of social media manipulation, greed and desperation while unmasking the darkest shades of humanity IRL.
Without any spoilers, I have to say I was particularly impressed with how well they handled some super sensitive and complex themes around racism, transgender identity, sexual harassment, paedophilia and the many dangers children (of all ages!) face, merely by being online, harmless as it ALL seems at first. Without being the least bit cliché about any of it!
And yet, while the series keeps your stomach churning, it stares itself in the face ever so often by acknowledging the double standards our patriarchal society endlessly propagates and somehow you STILL feel hopeful that if they’re making shows like this someone has gotta is listening right? Some mindsets MUST be ripe for the changing surely?!
Do yourself a favour and watch this show. Tell everyone you know about it, let’s all get really comfortable being uncomfortable because that’s when the narrative actually changes. Bravo Siddharth Kumar Tewary we need more of this!
Distinctly Mr Bachchan vibes from a dashing Jaaved Jaaferi and a deeply bone-chilling performance by Sumedh Mudgalkar. Siddharth I love that you play your character so honestly, with all his flaws in focus. Plabita Borthakur and Swastika Mukherjee play fierce and frightening so well off each other while Ritvik Sahore and Rohit Chandel bring so much heart-wrenching vulnerability to their game it’s astounding (love the music Meena picks for her content to Advait Nemlekar wonderful OST) with absolutely delightful effervescence from Shweta Tripathi Sharma as always! Walushcha De Sousa delivers a power-packed performance and Aadyaa Sharma is quite the little firecracker too!
A superbly well-rounded cast of Jagjeet Sandhu, Aditi Govitrikar, Geetika Vaidya, Aakanksha Singh, Sharat Saxena, Ashwin Mushran, Breshna Khan, Jaihind Kumar, and the rest of the crew.
(Honestly if I’ve missed tagging anyone please tell me, every single member of the cast deserves a mention!)