For a piece at What’s on Netflix, I looked through every Netflix India Original movie and series to find out which actors have appeared in the most Netflix India Originals. It was a lot of fun to see which actors made the list and which didn’t (honestly surprised that Manoj Bajpayee wasn’t in the Top 10). Do check out the article “Which Star Has the Most Appearances in Netflix India Originals? The Top 10 Actors Ranked.” I really enjoyed putting it together.
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Filmmaker Pulkit’s second Netflix Original feature Kartavya (“Duty“) deals with the failure of institutions to protect children, just as his gripping 2024 Netflix Original Bhakshak did. His sophomore effort is less successful than his first due to a disjointed plot that lacks surprises.
Since Bhakshak is about a reporter, it’s fitting that Kartavya starts with a journalist’s murder. Reema Dutta (Radhika Chauhan) arrives in the town of Jhamli to investigate a high-profile religious figure named Anand (Saurabh Dwivedi), who she believes is responsible for the disappearance of several children. Despite having a police escort led by Inspector Pawan Malik (Saif Ali Khan), two assailants on a motorcycle — one of whom escapes — kill Reema.
Pawan’s superior officer Keshav (Manish Chaudhari) wants to suspend him immediately, but Pawan talks his boss into giving him and his junior partner Ashok (Sanjay Mishra) a week to close the case.
Before the investigation even begins, Pawan meets with a calamity at home. His younger brother Deepak (Saurabh Abrol) has supposedly eloped with another student from his college, Preeti (Suraksha Gaire), but no one can find them. That’s for the best, as Preeti’s brother and the local panchayat want to murder them in an “honor killing” for marrying across caste lines. Pawan’s father Harihar (Zakir Hussain) insists on waiting for proof before executing the young lovers, but he’s not opposed to the idea.
Pawan and his wife Varsha (Rasika Dugal) find Deepak and Preeti and agree to help them leave town. But then Pawan learns that the escaped assassin who killed Reema is a 16-year-old boy named Harpal (Yudhvir Ahlawat) — one of the missing children she was investigating. Now Pawan has to get this kid safely out of town, too, while his boss and Ashok cower in fear of Anand and his goons.
The story bounces between Pawan working the murder case, Pawan trying to save his brother, Harihar dealing with Preeti’s brother and the local government, and Harpal running from Anand’s cronies. There’s little urgency in these disjointed sequences until they finally come together at the midpoint.
That leaves lots of time for characters to sit around and talk and for Pawan to smoke. Boy, does he like to smoke. The best moments in the film are conversations between Pawan and Ashok because Khan and Mishra are so good together, but Kartavya needs more action.
The story’s thinness is enhanced by a lack of subtext. Characters straight up admit what’s happening, with little in the way of twists. Despite plenty of characters, most of them have little to do. Pawan might as well have been single for as much as Varsha contributes. As the holy man Anand, ex-journalist and debutant actor Dwivedi looks like a creep (no offense), but he’s not as an intimidating as the cops make him out to be.
On the other hand, Saharsh Kumar Shukla puts in a menacing turn as Anand’s henchman Nirmal. Ahlawat also does a nice job portraying young Harpal’s fear and desperation.
Kartavya‘s casting is strange because Khan is playing much younger than he is. He’s 55, but Pawan is 40. I’m not sure how old Hussain is in real life, but he’s only got a few years on Khan, at best. All the grey hairspray in the world isn’t going to make him believable playing Khan’s dad. Even Mishra is just six years older than Khan, so the age gap between the partners doesn’t look as significant as it’s supposed to.
Despite being generally about the same social issue, Kartavya has little to say about institutional failings, compared to Bhakshak. Critique is sidelined in favor of man-on-a-mission directness that feels under-developed. I hoped for more.
The first movie from Rajkummar Rao’s production house Kampa Film fits right in with his recent filmography. Toaster is a Netflix Original dark comedy, just like other Netflix Original dark comedies starring Rao: Ludo, Guns & Gulaabs, and Monica, O My Darling. While the new movie gets a lot of things right, it fumbles some important parts of the story.
It also inadvertently makes a case against the current trend of starting a movie with a shocking in medias res scene to grab attention before flashing back in time. At the open, Rao’s character Ramakant is shown digging a grave in an abandoned theme park. Then the action flashes back to a few weeks earlier, as a supposedly upright politician Amol Amre (Jitendra Joshi) is shown philandering with a pair of white women. A junkie named Glen (Abhishek Banerjee) obtains a video of the affair and uses it to threaten the politician. Both scenes hint at problems to come, but we expect stakes to escalate as the story progresses. A preview isn’t always a hook.
Those scenes are followed by the audience’s chronological introduction to the miserly Ramakant, which would’ve been a much more interesting way to start the movie. While out on his morning jog, Ramakant swipes a bananas from a fruit vendor while complaining over the phone about a six-rupee discrepancy in his telecom bill. He demands a cash refund, pretending to be an elderly man near death while exercising next to an old man with a walker. We learn that he’s a guy who’s happy to lie in order to save a few pennies. The demonstration of his character is a much better hook than the two throwaway opening scenes.
For all his faults, Ramakant is devoted to his wife Shilpa (Sanya Malhotra). She’s ready for kids, but Ramakant thinks they’re a bad return on investment. That doesn’t stop him from lying to their landlady Mrs. D’Souza (Seema Pahwa) about starting a family in order to negotiate cheaper rent.
Shilpa hits her limit with Ramakant’s stinginess when he proposes spending 500 rupees (about $5) on a gift for their guru’s daughter’s wedding. Instead, she buys a fancy 4-slice toaster for 4,999 rupees. It pains Ramakant to spend that much, but he’s happy to brag about his generosity to the bride’s family.
The next morning, it’s revealed that the groom-to-be got his secret girlfriend pregnant, leading the wedding to be cancelled. Against all rules of decorum and human decency, Ramakant goes to the bride’s house to ask for his toaster back. He’s outraged to learn they donated the gifts to an orphanage, so he breaks into the orphanage to steal the toaster.
At best, Ramakant is a grey character, but his relationship with Shilpa gives hope that he can be a better man than he is. Things get more dangerous when his toaster thievery plot intersects with the politician blackmail subplot. Turns out junkie Glen is Mrs. D’Souza’s son, and Ramakant’s neighbor. Tragedy ensues, raising the stakes for Ramakant both legally and morally.
About halfway through, Toaster loses its way. Ramakant crosses a moral line that is very hard to come back from, at least not without some kind of confession, atonement, or karmic justice. But Toaster treats this as just a plot point, and Ramakant isn’t transformed by what happens, making for an unsatisfying conclusion.
There’s some very clever dialogue and really good performances, particularly from Malhotra and Farah Khan in a funny cameo as the owner of the orphanage. Upendra Limaye is also entertaining as the politician’s henchman. Rao’s performance is in keeping with the many other “ordinary man” roles he’s played over his career.
The film gets bogged down with a segment of the story that involves an elderly neighbor, Pherwani Aunty, played by Archana Puran Singh. Maybe the section will hit with Singh’s fans, but it overstayed its welcome for me and added to the sense that the filmmakers didn’t calibrate the story correctly. Of all of Rao’s Netflix Original dark comedies, Toaster ranks last.
The Netflix Original Tamil movie Made in Korea is data-driven filmmaking at its worst. This fish-out-of-water story is an assemblage of scenes lacking a soul.
Shenba (Priyanka Mohan) lives in a small village in Tamil Nadu so remote that she has to stand on the back of an elephant to get a cell signal. She grew up fascinated with tales of an Indian woman who traveled to South Korea and became a queen (based on the legend of Heo Hwang-ok). Despite her love for all things Korean, visiting the country of her dreams seems impossible.
Other people have their own dreams for Shenba. Her father wants her to take over the small family restaurant. Her secret boyfriend Mani (Rishikanth) wants to marry her, but only after he sorts out his financial problems. When Shenba’s family finds a groom for her, she and Mani flee to the city.
Miraculously, Mani secures a job for Shenba at a hotel in Seoul, promising to find work there himself. When Mani fails to board the plane to Korea with her, Shenba learns a horrible truth: Mani bought Shenba’s plane ticket with money her father dropped off for her, and he headed to Mumbai alone with the rest of the cash.
Freshly heartbroken in a city where she knows no one, Shenba discovers her hotel job was a scam. A handsome stranger named Heo Jun-jae (Si-hun Baek) takes pity on her and finds her a job as a caretaker for a sick, elderly woman, Yeon-ok (Park Hye-jin).
Up to this point, sophomore writer-director Ra Karthik is pretty thorough about establishing Shenba’s relationships with the people in her life — particularly those back home, and even her connection with Jun-jae makes sense. But from this point forward, every relationship is speed-run in order to check scenes off a Korean travelogue shot list (perhaps mandated by Netflix itself). Why things happen the way they do with the people they do makes no sense.
Shenba quickly discovers that Yeon-ok is faking her illness as a way to punish her son and daughter-in-law, with whom she lives. Yeon-ok threatens to accuse Shenba of stealing if she reveals her secret, but then immediately decides the young woman is her best friend. She drags Shenba to touristy spots around the city with Jun-jae in tow to document everything. ‘Cause, sure.
Then the woman open a restaurant together, and Shenba organizes a “K-pop” band out of the only other people she’s spoken to in Korea. I’ve never seen an idol group with a violinist, but okay.
There are all kinds of tropey K-drama moments, like the women hiring a part-timer to help with the restaurant, or the band shooting a K-pop-style music video. All we’re missing is a kimchi slap.
The whole thing feels hollow. Made in Korea was clearly designed by Netflix to fulfill two missions: capitalize on the popularity of Korean content in India and fill out the streamer’s thin South Indian Originals catalogue. The movie does so, but in a perfunctory way.
This movie isn’t born out of an Indian filmmaker’s own love for Korean pop culture. Ra Karthik said, “Personally, I had never watched a K-drama or listened to K-pop until I began working on Made In Korea.” It shows. If you’re familiar with K-dramas, there are a ton of ways to tell a fish-out-of-water story that leans into Korean TV-narrative styles, while showing character growth and exploring shared cultural traditions.
Made in Korea doesn’t do that. It hits a couple of K-culture tropes, shows some Instagram-worthy tourist spots, and calls it a day. Characters become friends, fight, and make up because the plot demands it, not because they have any reason to do so. It just feels empty.
If none of these new titles interest you, check out my Best Bollywood Movies of 2025 post. All ten films on the list are great and are currently available for streaming in the United States.
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Netflix’s latest Indian Original movie features a lesbian couple in crisis, and its LGBTQ theme makes Accused stand out among other Indian Originals. Unfortunately, a formulaic story treatment makes the film more novel than innovative.
Comparisons between Accused and Todd Field’s 2022 movie Tár are inevitable. Both focus on a queer woman in a position of power whose career and marriage are threatened by sexual harassment allegations. Accused shifts things by making the allegations more of a mystery than a sure thing and by devoting more time to the main character’s wife’s experience.
Dr. Geetika Sen (Konkona Sen Sharma), an ace surgeon and gynecologist at London’s Chapelstone General Hospital, is known as much for her her gruff manner as for her medical talents. She’s about to leave for a big promotion at another hospital in England. On top of that, she and her wife Meera (Pratibha Ranta) are adopting a baby.
While the couple seems happy together, there are a few signs of trouble early in the story. Geetika is routinely late to events, giving the excuse that she was in surgery and out of reach — and sometimes that’s true. Their move away puts Meera’s own pediatrics career on hold, which is important, given that there’s an age gap of at least 10 years between the couple (Sen Sharma is 21 years older than Ranta in real life). Geetika feels like her more established career takes precedence, even if it prevents Meera from making similar progress in hers.
Then there’s the fact that Meera’s family back in Meerut don’t even know she’s in love with a woman, let alone married to one. An attempt to introduce Geetika to Meera’s brother while he’s in town is scuttled when Geetika fails to show up for lunch.
In the midst of everything, Chapelstone Hospital receives an anonymous complaint from a patient alleging inappropriate sexual conduct by Geetika during an exam. Geetika insists she didn’t do anything wrong, but the hospital’s head of Human Resources, Simran (Monica Mahendru), is obligated to investigate, despite their friendship.
Rumors circulate, and soon there are more anonymous complaints, including one on a social media site. Racists and homophobes are happy to pile on the insults until the hospital can’t ignore it. Geetika is put on leave. Things only get worse from there.
The social media segment is one of the worst examples of Accused falling into contemporary Hindi filmmaking tropes. Images of social media comments float on the screen around Geetika, including one that reads, “Someone tag Netflix, the pilot episode just dropped.” The visual gimmick is tired enough even without the tacky self-referentialism.
Geetika becomes convinced that someone is framing her, and her paranoia only ramps up her tendencies toward secrecy. But that prompts Meera to wonder what else her wife is hiding. Add to that all the people who are happy to see Geetika brought down a peg — aggrieved colleagues, Meera’s infatuated co-worker Angad (Aditya Nanda) — and the doubt becomes more than the relationship can bear.
The lead actors do a really wonderful job. Sen Sharma is the ideal choice to play a character who can wither with a look while still being sympathetic. Ranta plays off her in a way that highlights the power imbalance and Meera’s growing discomfort with it.
Yet the film is so straightforward and surface level that it feels less substantial than it could have. Issues around queer identity in Indian culture are mentioned but not examined. Much of the dialogue around sexual harassment is taken from workplace conduct handbooks and feels divorced from lived experience. These big issues are convenient plot setups, but that’s it.
Accused even wraps with characters monologuing about the lessons they learned throughout — as if we, the audience, didn’t just watch them learning those lessons. It would’ve been nice if director Anubhuti Kashyap and writers Sima Agarwal & Yash Keshwani had more faith that an audience that would seek out such a story could handle a more robust examination of the issues it presents.
In the afternoon of February 19, watch for Anurag Kashyap’s crime thriller Kennedy to make its streaming debut on ZEE5. I really enjoyed Kennedy.
Also on Thursday afternoon, watch for the premiere of the Hotstar Specials Tamil series Lucky the Superstar on Hulu.
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I updated my list of Bollywood movies on Amazon Prime with the premiere of the new Hindi romance series Bandwaale, starring Shalini Pandey and Zahan Kapoor. Amazon also announced a March 5 premiere date for its new Original Hindi Subedaar, starring Anil Kapoor:
I also updated my list of Bollywood movies on Netflix with several new additions this week, including Season 2 of Kohrra (Punjabi) and the 2026 theatrical releases Thalaivar Thambi Thalaimaiyil (Tamil) and Anaganaga Oka Raju (Telugu). The Yash Raj Films Valentine’s Day event — the final event reintegrating YRF titles into the Netflix catalog — is also underway with daily additions of classic YRF romances. It should conclude on Friday with 2002’s Saathiya, but I’m hoping for a surprise addition of Roadside Romeo (the 2008 animated film YRF tries to pretend doesn’t exist). Here’s what’s been added during the YRF Valentine’s event so far:
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Netflix hosted their Next on Netflix India 2026 event to reveal the Original titles they plan to release this year. The lineup included eight brand new titles, with additional details about other previously announced movies and series. I wrote about all of the titles presented at the event for What’s on Netflix, incorporating the new information into our giant 2026 Netflix India preview. That’s a pretty objective piece, so I thought I’d write about some of the Netflix Original titles I’m most looking forward to in 2026, starting with the movies.
Accused
Konkona Sen Sharma and Pratibha Ranta play a couple whose marriage is strained by allegations of sexual misconduct. The fact that Netflix India is even putting out an LGBTQ relationship drama makes it worth watching.
Ikka
Sunny Deol makes his streaming debut opposite Akshaye Khanna in this courtroom drama.
Lust Stories 3
Check out the lineup of directors for this anthology series: Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra, and Vishal Bhardwaj. Absolutely insane. The cast is outrageous, too: Konkona Sen Sharma, Radhika Apte, Vijay Varma, Abhishek Banerjee, Gurfateh Pirzada, Sana Thampi, Ali Fazal, Radhika Madan, Aditi Rao Hydari, and Siddharth.
Maa Behen
Madhuri Dixit plays Triptii Dimri’s mom. ‘Nuff said.
Made in Korea
This Tamil-Korean cross-cultural coming-of-age story sounds fun.
Toaster
This is the movie I’m most excited about. Rajkummar Rao plays a guy whose new marriage — to Sanya Malhotra — implodes immediately, and he becomes obsessed with a fancy toaster they got as a wedding gift.
I was disappointed that Imran Khan’s comeback film Adhure Hum Adhure Tum wasn’t part of the Next on Netflix India 2026 presentation. Apparently, the executive who greenlit it isn’t with the company anymore, so the team is just waiting around to see if Netflix is still interested.
Now the series. Obviously, I don’t review many Indian series on this site, but a few of these Original shows look pretty good.
Family Business
Anil Kapoor plays a tycoon who hands the reigns of his company over to his successor (Vijay Varma), only to boot his protégé and retake the company. It sounds like a more contentious version of the Disney succession drama from a few years ago.
Musafir Cafe
I love that they’re offering something besides thrillers and crime shows. Netflix needs more romantic dramas.
Super Subbu
They also need more comedies. This Telugu show about an unqualified sex ed teacher sounds funny.
Then there’s the reality show Lock Upp from producer Ekta Kapoor. She had another show named Lock Upp that aired on her streaming service ALTBalaji in 2022, hosted by Kangana Ranaut. It’s unclear from the materials Netflix released if this is a reboot of the existing format, or if they are just re-airing the original 2022 season. The latter would be hilarious.
All in all, we’ve got four returning Original Indian series, 13 new Original series, and 11 Original movies confirmed for the rest of the year. That’s a lot, especially since only Season 2 of Kohrra and the new series Hello Bachhon (they Physics Wallah show) have release dates (February 11 and March 6, respectively). I guess we’ll have to wait and see what we get in 2026.
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