Spy series focuses on the wrong lead

Gaurav Shukla's spy series 'Saare Jahan Se Accha' can't add anything new to the saturated espionage genre

- Uday Bhatia

Saare Jahan Se Accha spends most of its time listing differences between India and Pakistan. But Netflix's new spy series can't help draw attention to a common heritage: language. Characters switch naturally between Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and English, as so many did in undivided Punjab. The Punjabi in particular—spoken by Pakistani and Indian characters—is mellifluous, flowing off the tongues of the actors, not the same intonations you'd hear in a modern Hindi film. It reminded me of Song of Lahore (2015), Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's musical documentary, with the Punjabi session players hitting the consonants in trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' name: "Vin-ttun".

The show, created by Gaurav Shukla, opens with conspiracy theory (the CIA blowing up a plane with Indian nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha on board) and boilerplate spy drama truths (we operate in the shadows, our families don't know what we do). Both are delivered in a flat voiceover by Pratik Gandhi, who plays intelligence agent Vishnu Shankar. After the formation of RAW in 1968, its head, R.N. Kao (Rajat Kapoor), sends Vishnu on a top-secret mission: relocate to Islamabad and sabotage Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.