Mumbai, India – Nikkhil Advani’s The Revolutionaries, an eight-episode historical drama about the armed revolutionaries of India’s Independence movement, arrives with a lot going for it. It tells the lesser-known story of the underground rebels who fought the British with bullets and bombs before Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent crusades. Its primary antagonist is Lieutenant Colonel Dyer, before he became the world’s most hated Englishman for his role in the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Yet, despite the lavish mounting and a young cast, the series snatches defeat from the jaws of victory, feeling like the jealous cousin of the far-superior Freedom At Midnight.
The sets radiate artifice, and the storytelling has no business being so bland, given it isn’t burdened with legacy names like Gandhi, Patel, or Nehru. The narrative covers three years up till the 1915 Ghadar Mutiny but reduces the intricate network of global rebellion to a handful of leaders locked in a chase with a campy villain across exotic places. The series follows Rash Behari Bose (Bhuvan Bam), Sachindranath Sanyal (Rohit Saraf), and Bagha Jatin (Gurfateh Pirzada). Bhuvan Bam’s Bose is sullen and elusive, while Rohit Saraf’s Sachin has a YA romcom presence that disrupts the gore-and-assassination storyline. The cosplay vibe is strong with most performers, and the self-seriousness prevents them from swinging big. Jason Shah as Colonel Dyer is the only one in sync with the excesses of the filmmaking.
The shortcuts are disappointing, given the calibre of the production. A plane is shot down, but we don’t see the aftermath; the British outnumber the Indians at Calcutta port, but the chaos conceals how three escaped. The series cannot fully soften the intent of the source material presenting the characters as bravehearts fighting for modern recognition as much as freedom. Their rage seems like it’s competing with the pacifism that India eventually won freedom with. If the new-age Indian-ness in the series is a harbinger of things to come, it does a disservice to its path-breaking protagonists. The Revolutionaries is currently streaming.
