‘AFSOS': DECODING THE ANTI-HERO

‘Our approach was a little irreverent, a little lighthearted,’ says director Anubhuti Kashyap about the black comedy/thriller series

- JESSICA XALXO

It all started with a what if — “What if we make a show where nobody gets their way?” mused writers Anirban Dasgupta and Dibya Chatterjee while penning the script for their black comedy/thriller series Afsos. Based on the fake Bengali novel (a figment of the writers’ imagination) Golper Goru Chaande, Amazon Prime Video’s latest offering follows a man (Nakul played by Gulshan Devaiah) whose “insufferable imagination” leads him to hire a hitwoman (Karima Upadhyay played by Heeba Shah) to kill him, all while a priest (Fokatiya baba played by Robin Das) sets out to give him the elixir of immortality.

The series, while initially intended for a showcase in Bengali cinema, changed both format and language as the writers (and co-creators of the show alongside Sourav Ghosh) decided to take their experiment to the digital platform. Not too long ago, a show like Afsos might not have found an expansive medium with global viewership, but the writers believe that with the dawn of Indian OTT in full-swing, “there is an audience for all kinds of shows,” especially an irreverent black comedy such as Afsos where nobody — and the writers dare cite themselves — gets what they want.

“If you see every character, their defining word is