I often used to wonder why our drama series fare relatively less when compared to the ones made by Western production houses. Budget is an obvious reason which not just gives a much needed punch to the production values of those series, but also helps in getting popular faces to play key roles. And the setup being something that is already established with their audiences, the production houses don't have to oversell any series beyond regular advertisement methods.
Even though some of the series, especially those produced by Netflix/Amazon kinds, have similar budget scope, the main area where i feel our series falls short being dialogues and screenplay. Some of the stories that come up on Amazon and Netflix are quite good and as intriguing as any Korean or English series. For example, Kala Paani on Netflix was awesome and felt as Hollywood-ish as any series made. The situations, dialogues, screen play every aspect about those series was spot on to say the least. Amazon tries its level best to match up to Netflix in this area and sadly till date, it hasn't managed a block buster series at least on par with Netflix. They do try to cook up an odd one here and there, which is primarily based on forests or some remote areas, but as much as the story line has potential the on screen adaptation miserably fails. Someone in their higher up domain has decided that the more darker, i mean literally dark with no light, a scene is, the thriller the end result would be!! Whenever they come up with some mystery or thriller genre series, you have to not just adjust your display brightness to maximum but also have to burn up your EB bill by switching on every light source in vicinity. Even then the screen will only relect audio and barely any image!!! And despite the content being environment friendly or save the forests kind of campaign material story line, makes one wonder how much of forest area they would've destroyed in making such series!!
Disney Hotstar is the worst when it comes to making series in Tamil, despite their mega money purse. I recently came across a series on doctors called "Heart beat" and was tempted to watch it. I like series made on hospitals and doctors for their diagnostic episodes would be nothing short of cracking a murder mystery, like House M.D or Good Doctor or even Grey's Anatomy to some extent. Not just the setup, but also the situations, scenes and dialogues would make you believe in the setup. You need not know every medicine name or the procedures they perform to treat illness, but they are quite convincing as an act. As compared to that "Heart beat" loses out on every respect in a heart beat!!! Every 5 minutes the characters either go to canteen to eat or to have coffee or leave for home to have a drink. Possibly in the future episodes, they may be trying to show how doctors are impacted by such eating and drinking habits?!!! The lack of originality or ability to conceive any scene outside of having food makes it worse than any other mega serial. For all the budget they might've used, if only they spared a portion of it to study doctors and hospitals a bit more, we might've a potential gold mine of a series. Wish someone tries it out for real and give the vellakkaaara series a run for their money!!
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I actually think Indian drama series have been right up there with any in the West - in fact with better viewership. The issue is that what a majority of the audience wants is not what you may like. Saas Bahu serials have taken the country by storm in the age of Television. Thats the type of drama that a large number of Indians want.
The Netflix/Prime/Hotstar audience is a very urban and fragmented audience. All sorts of tastes exist and any single drama series will appeal to only a small fraction of the audience. What's on offer is very likely to feel unsatisfactory. But turn to Television, even today, and the blockbusters are all there. The aunty from Dhumri Talao is glued to the TV.
Novice's view. Would be interested in Gilsu's expert rebuttal !