Anil Kapoor’s 24 is Unusually Good TV – & Worthy of a Weekend Fix

As a fan of the original, it’s easy to see how Anil Kapoor’s 24 borrows from it while effortlessly ‘Indianising’ it.

When faced with the occasional hazard of having nothing to watch (a first-world travesty, if any), one will often go back to rehashing the classics. A couple of weeks of following Anil Kapoor’s 24 on TV and I was inspired to go digging into my archives and pull out the old American one.

The series, that had Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer in the lead, was a smash hit, if you’re fond of the colloquial, and was deservedly picked up by Kapoor for an Indian adaptation (after he starred in the American series’ season 8 himself).

Whilst I immersed myself in Jack Bauer’s world again, though, I was pleasantly surprised at how very aligned the two seemed – the split screens, the ominous golden number ticking away to impending world domination/presidential assassination/what-have-you, that very heady mix of adrenaline meets sentimentalism….

Anil Kapoor’s 24 isn’t a celebration of the prodigal-son-returns-(surgically enhanced) from-the-dead. It isn’t a celebration of flies and flying reptiles, charmed amulets and people who pay for them either. We knew that part. But what’s most admirable about the show is that it pirouettes perfectly between the west and the east.

Here’s why 24 deserves your undivided attention:

Just the Right Amount of ‘Indianisation’

Anil Kapoor hit the nail on the head when he said –

“We did everything in style. We ‘Indianised’ the original a bit. But only enough so that fans of the original do not feel betrayed.”

As a fan of the original, I don’t believe he could have been more precise. Kapoor’s 24, in its curiously inimitable style, does the impossible – it straddles the lines of ‘Hollywood’ and ‘Bollywood’ in a way arguably few TV shows have managed to do before. Thus, the pulsating countdown (borrowed from the original) and the rush of adrenaline as Jai Singh Rathore races against an invisible hourglass is juxtaposed simultaneously with a young Indian prime minister in love with a doctor from the suburbs.

What’s the Hullabaloo Over a Kiss?

We’re so glad you asked, because just like Mr Jhakaas himself, we were at a loss when a kiss (between the characters of Kapoor and Surveen Chawla) in the trailer of 24 suddenly hijacked conversations about the series.

About time we stopped making a fuss about these things. The content in 24 is not juvenile. We are looking at a series which has certain international standards to uphold.

Anil Kapoor to IANS

That, is a brilliant statement to make. For one, it truly is beyond the cadences of human imagination that a kiss can overpower a conversation about good, solid television. For another, Kapoor has effectively shut up all naysayers who will lap up anything on Netflix while simultaneously dissing and dismissing Indian television for being ‘regressive’. Kapoor’s got a good thing going – how about giving it and your TV-addled brains a chance?

Because Filmi is Key

If you’d seen the 4-minute long trailer before the start of the show, you’d have been in no doubt that this was going to be a very (shall we say) philmy show.

There’s an agent obsessed with the shadows of his past, a son who cannot forgive him for the death of his mother, a prime minister much too good looking and much too righteous to not be an instant fave, a tough-as-nails anti-terrorism unit head… the list goes on. It’s got ALL the elements of a sumptuous thriller, and as Kapoor himself put it:

We shot it like a feature film and even held a premiere show of the first episode where I invited all my colleagues from the film industry. The premiere episode of “24” had to go through the full censor process. Since we were screening it like a feature film, we had to get it censored. This is the first time that a television product is being treated like a feature film.

The fact that an industry bigwig like Anil Kapoor has treated the show as a veritable format, and not merely a “space filler” as he puts it himself, immediately accords a sense of responsibility to television.

Mediums of storytelling are changing and conscientious Bollywood stars like Anil Kapoor are climbing on to the bandwagon with ease. Far from the madding crowd of the television you are used to, will you give 24 a chance?

Also Read: Anil Kapoor Is a Big Fan of ...? Find Out!