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Cast: Bhuvan Bam, Rohit Saraf, Gurfateh Pirzada, Pratibha Ranta, Tota Roy Chowdhary, Paoli Dam, Neil Bhoopalam, and others
Creator & Director: Nikkhil Advani
Streaming On: Prime Video
Language: Hindi
Runtime: 8 episodes of 50 minutes each
Kabhi kabhi sochta hun, kranti ke liye kya khoya kya paaya. Laut jaao chhote babu, tells a very heartbroken Rash Behari Bose to Sachindra Sanyal, who replies, “Hum garv se apne Gadar ka jhanda, angrezi hukumat ke shikhar par lehraayenge!” In this one moment, you get a glimpse of what a young mind would have gone through at a time when India was being choked by the British Empire, and we were slaves to the Queen! Two men, who offered motivation to each other, in a moment of surrender. Nikkhil Advani, in his web series The Revolutionaries, designs the story of the untold movement of the Indian Freedom struggle, which was parallel to Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru’s non-violent movement!
Every school textbook in this country gives you the same four names on a loop when we read about the Freedom Struggle of India – Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Bose. A few films and a few pages of history also mention the young rebels – Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Chandhra Shekhar Azad, Nikkhil Advani’s show exists to ask a furious question: what about everyone else? What about the ones who didn’t believe a salt march or a round table conference was ever going to move an empire that had already decided it wasn’t leaving without a fight?
Based on Sanjeev Sanyal’s book Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom, this eight-episode Prime Video series pulls Rash Behari Bose, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, and Bagha Jatin out of the footnotes and hands them the main stage. And for a good stretch of its runtime, you walk away not just informed, but genuinely, unapologetically proud of these men who started the revolt against the British Empire, in a very calculated manner.
The Revolutionaries Review: What’s It About:
Set largely around 1912, decades after the failed uprising of 1857, The Revolutionaries follows a loose, dangerous network of young Indians -students, poets, professionals who concluded that petitions and polite protest were never going to work on the British Empire. The story of The Revolutionaries plays out like a history lesson. If you didn’t grow up knowing the specifics of the Ghadar movement’s reach beyond Punjab, that’s precisely the point – the show is banking on your ignorance to generate real tension, and mostly, it works.
Through the stories of Rash Behari Bose (Bhuvan Bam), Sachindra Nath Sanyal (Rohit Saraf), and Jatin Bagha (Gurfateh Pirzada), along with Pratibha Ranta, the show builds a grandeur out of the Ghadar Movement of India’s Freedom Struggle against the British Empire.
The screenplay covers an enormous amount of historical ground – multiple cities, multiple conspiracies, multiple years- and it never lets you down. Advani made a deliberate choice to make these youngsters look very informed and aware. And he succeeds. He makes sure that the story looks very real and raw, despite all the grandeur! They are all 20-something youngsters who cannot dream about a future, because they cannot see one! But still they are living and building dreams of a future in free India. They fall in love, make mistakes, and learn from them. They are well-read, trying to think like Sherlock Holmes, as Pratibha Lahiri, in one of the scenes, quips! It looks like a deliberate attempt to connect to the audiences of 2026, through a story from 1912, a story that would resonate and that would connect!
The Revolutionaries Review: What Works
Nikkhil Advani, after Freedom At Midnight, clearly isn’t tired of the freedom-struggle genre, and it shows in how confidently he stages the show’s action set-pieces – this never feels like a slow, dutiful history lesson, it moves like a thriller that happens to be historically true. Where he stumbles is in pacing discipline across eight hour-long episodes; a tighter edit in the middle stretch would have made the back half’s payoffs land considerably harder. But there’s real craft in how he frames the British Raj’s brutality here without letting you forget it, refusing the easy, sanitized version of colonial history.
The soundtrack led by Akashdeep Sengupta across several tracks, with contributions from Shreyas Puranik, Ashutosh Phatak, and Manan Bhardwaj, largely does its job of reinforcing mood rather than distracting from it. Sukhwinder Singh’s anthem Aur Aayenge works brilliantly. In fact, the entire music album of the show is celebratory!
The show’s single biggest achievement is simply existing – giving screen time and dignity to names that deserved a chapter of their own long before now, and refusing to let the Gandhi-Nehru narrative be the only version of the story we hand down. The performances elevate the material. However, the screenplay’s ambition outpaces its discipline – too many threads competing for too little time results in a rushed, occasionally uneven screenplay. The modern-inflected dialogue, while well-intentioned, periodically breaks the period spell that the show otherwise builds so carefully. And for a story this emotionally loaded, the show is, at times, more gripping than it is moving. You’re invested in what happens next far more consistently than you’re devastated by what already has.
The Revolutionaries Review: Star Performance:
The ensemble of this show is brilliant. Bhuvan Bam‘s casting as Rash Behari Bose raised eyebrows the day it was announced. This is a comedian, after all, but he answers every bit of that confusion with a performance that is genuine and brimming with conviction. It’s the biggest, most successful image-swing of his career. Pratibha Ranta continues to do exactly what she’s been doing since Laapata Ladies – quietly stealing scenes. She is the most alive person in almost every frame she’s in, someone willing to burn her own life down for both her country and the man she loves, without ever making that feel like a contradiction.
Rohit Saraf, cast as the hesitant Sachindra Nath Sanyal, works brilliantly in his and the show’s favor, bringing an emotional urgency. Gurfateh Pirzada, as Bagha Jatin, brings physical intensity and fury to this story! Jason Shah’s General Dyer is a genuinely unsettling antagonist – not a cartoon villain, but a man who believes, with total sincerity, in his own righteousness, which is far scarier. And in smaller but crucial roles, Tota Roy Chowdhury’s and Paoli Dam’s presence brings gravity to this ensemble. Along with Neil Bhoopalam, they bring the discipline and weight it needs around its younger, flashier leads.
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The Revolutionaries Review: What Doesn’t Work:
The Revolutionaries isn’t a flawless retelling, but it is an essential one – a history lesson finally giving India’s overlooked freedom fighters the star treatment usually reserved for a few names everyone already knows. It stumbles in its screenplay’s pacing and occasionally in tone, but it rarely stumbles in conviction.
The Revolutionaries Review: Last Words:
Waade wahi poore hote hain jo sacche hote, waade wahi poore hote hain jo izzat se kiye jaate hain, barabari se kiye jaate hain. Ek hi aisa vaada hai – Saccha bhi hai, pakka bhi hai – Azaadi ka. Koi bataaye hamare bhaiyon ko is vaade ke baare mein to maanenge. Koi bataaye unhe ki ab ladna sirf ek cheez ke liye hai – Azaadi. Gulaami se azaadi, dar se azaadi, angrezon se aazaadi, says Rash Behari Bose, in one of the final scenes of the show! Watching it does exactly what it sets out to do: it leaves you with pride, and mostly, that pride is earned.
3.5 stars!
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