Sacred Games: A Show That Has Taken Entire Country By Storm!

When Vikram Chandra wrote the book Sacred Games in 2006, little did he know that more than a decade later, the digital medium will offer new perspectives to the entertainment world. Vikram’s book, rewritten by Varun Grover, Smita Singh and Vasant Nath has been made into a web television and is the 1st Netflix original from India.

Season 1 has already been released and has taken the country by storm, apart from being appreciated overseas as well. Smart marketing has led to huge spurt in subscriptions as 1 month free offer was given. Certainly, there will be some who will avail the free one month offer and then exit but there will be many who will continue, and probably Netflix is confident of retention.

The book itself is more than 900 pages and probably justice would not have been done to it in a single movie of 3 hours . The digital medium offers that flexibility. Season 1 has 8 episodes of 45 minutes each, and there shall be 4 seasons of 8 episodes each. For season 1, Varun has written Episodes 1 and 8, Smita Episodes 2,3 and 6 while Vasant has penned Episodes 4, 5 and 7.

There are 2 directors as well who are close friends and associates. Vikramaditya Motwane was earlier assistant to Sanjay Leela Bhansali before starting independent work. His 1st movie, Udaan was for Anurag Kasyap’s production house. Sacred Games is directed by both of them.

The 2 Protagonists are Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin. Saif’s scenes are directed by Motwane while Nawaz’s are by Anurag Kashyap. Saif plays a Mumbai Cop, Sartaj Singh while Nawaz plays a mafia Don, Ganesh Gaitonde. They are seen together only in one episode, in the ending of the 1st one. Thereafter the story of Nawaz is told in flashback mode while the story of Saif is of current times. Radhika Apte is the 3rd main character of Season 1 and she plays the role of Anjali Mathur, a RAW officer.