.jpg){kind=small}
The Viral Fever (TVF) is a great OTT service that makes amazing shows that are highly relatable. Their secret is to get their research right and get super-specific about the script and screenplay. The hyperlocal nature of their references and jokes is what makes you relate to the content onscreen.
They tend to make it personal and intimate and the effort is clearly evident onscreen. Here are some of the series that they have created (apparently in order of life phases) and why you should watch them.
The Viral Fever: 1. Yeh Meri Family (2018)
WWF trading cards and cricket trump cards were valid currency in the '90s for boys in school. This meant Brett "the Hitman" Hart and Hulk Hogan cards along with Center Fresh chewing gum trading cards with cricketers' career stats.
There was also the occasional butt-whooping you received from your parents which led to sulk sessions. This might have been brought on by lying about your test marks, back-answering one too many times, or even just bad timing coupled with worse luck. (Of course, this does not apply to Trust Fund Babies!)
Every kid in this series gets a healthy serving of butt-whooping in this series leading to some quality sulking scenes.
Several traditions in school are probably extinct now, such as the sweets distribution on your birthday. You'd get to choose a friend to go around to different classes and give out sweets.
Birthday parties at home were cozy personal gatherings with people in your neighborhood showing up to celebrate the occasion. These days it's done a bit differently but that's just nostalgia talking.
Do you want to Meet the Indian Batman - Anurag Halder
2. ImMature Seasons 1 and 2 (2019)
I watched this series when it was first released on MX Player. While Yeh Meri Family focused on what happened on the home front as a teenager, ImMature covered the goings-on at school. It is funny, light, and a feel-good watch.
Going clockwise from the top you could observe the rite of passage as a school student, with the hands-up humiliation frequently employed by schools. Next are the probable fights you would pick or at least plan to pick with frenemies or classmates from a rival school.
Then there is the classroom which you would eventually deface in some way - benches, walls, and so on. The classroom is also the main venue for chalk fights which would probably continue well into pre-university college.
Check out Why Does Kantara Strike An Emotional Chord?
3. Kota Factory Seasons 1 and 2 (2019 - 2021)
Not everyone can relate to The Viral Fever series as it is about the business behind cracking the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) entrance exams. Considering the ratio of students who ultimately get in, the whole endeavor is sorta doomed from the start.
But the ones who do get in, reap all the glory, at least that's what they say. (Meanwhile, IIT's and NIT's are removing fans from rooms to abate suicide by students)
The series is in black and white to show us how colorless the lives of the students end up being while preparing for this exam. You can also hear the sounds of the manufacturing facility, or more accurately a printing press used to denote the factory in Kota Factory.
The creepy part of this series is that it's based on a mash-up of real-life incidents including the students who got through, the inhuman seeming institute that churned out IITians, and so on.
The #1 Rank student is celebrated with the gift of a BMW car is exactly as it happened in real life. What's super unsettling are the founders of a leading coaching institute in Kota posing the same way as shown in the series.
The video displays the real-life parallels in detail:
But there are good parts to the real-life parallels as well, with an inspiring teacher using unconventional practical methods to teach scientific principles. Also, the students who made it into IIT after quite a bit of struggle.
Kota Factory has this slight holier-than-thou theme going on right from the intro, yet it did not spare a second to change the company that sponsored the series in the first place. I mean pick a lane right, you're showing how inhumane these institutes can be, making this into a lucrative business.
In the end, however, they're like, let's match the sponsor perfectly with the theme of studying using a leading e-learning enterprise and do unlimited product placement slots of the same.
4. Hostel Daze Seasons 1 and 2 ( 2019 - 2021)
I've seen people describing this series as being a 3 Idiots rip-off, but as you watch it, there are a lot of nuance in how they portray engineering hostel life.
The students are perpetually broke in this series, treasure Old Monk, and are always thinking of ways to get lucky. There's also a toned-down version of ragging that's shown and bonding that usually happens over food and booze.
The bad food in the hostel is pretty accurate, although whenever I ate at our college hostel the food was pretty good. I guess eating at the same place for years wears down the novelty of things.
5. Panchayat (2020)
I once had a friend who got an engineering seat in a remote part of the country. But he did go there, complete his engineering, and find a job in time to establish a stable career. The remote location of the college did not stop him from having fun while studying, although there was no such thing as nightlife back there.
Then there was my classmate who studied with me in an urban location and graduated with honors. However, when he did clear campus placements, he got into a leading manufacturing MNC as a floor supervisor. The hours at the job were long and tedious just like the protagonist in this series but the experience was valuable and the pay was not bad.
If you combine both these scenarios, you'll get the approximate plot of the Panchayat The Viral Fever (TVF) series.
A friend spoke of inter-departmental fights over who gets what chair at this massive MNC (pre-covid). It was downright petty for him but quite interesting for us to listen to. I've heard in other small and mid-sized companies, that similar quarrels happen over "chair theft" partially due to a lack of facility management and resource planning.
While this is pretty far removed from what happens in the series, the quarrel is still over a chair and things got ugly in both cases.
Jitendra Kumar displays his acting chops in this series, playing the part of an exasperated government employee to perfection. You can see the varying levels of exasperation the Abhishek Tripathi displays as the episodes progress.