BOTTOM LINE
4-Hour-Long PR Effort Fails to Land
PLATFORM
NETFLIX
RUNTIME
4 Hours (5 Episodes)
What Is the Show About?
Alakh Pandey struggles to keep his small coaching centre alive while massive corporations try to buy him out. He faces constant betrayals, teacher resignations, and mounting debts. Meanwhile, his students battle poverty and academic failure, fighting a system stacked against them. Refusing to sell his soul, Alakh takes his mission online, sparking a high-stakes revolution to make education a right for the masses.
Performances
There is no discrediting the value that Viineet Kumar Singh, Vikram Kochhar, and Girija Oak Godbole bring as performers, but this is definitely not a show that gives much value to their mettle. It simply takes their presence for granted, offering them toothless characters. Viineet’s awkwardness in his performance is quite palpable; he struggles to bring Alakh Pandey alive due to the flat writing. The supporting cast is formidable, though their stories lack any impact.
Analysis
When a show like Kota Factory achieves mainstream success, it only proves that it struck a chord with its target crowd. However, this is not an excuse for OTT platforms to churn out endless clones. While Kota Factory worked, it also silently endorsed a toxic hustle culture, justifying why students must slog like donkeys to survive. Instead of challenging the norm, it romanticised the grind that crushes young minds.
TVF, which backed Kota Factory, now milks the product further with Hello Bachhon. Directed by the same filmmaker, Pratish Mehta, this is a four-hour advert tracing the journey of Physics Wallah, the ed-tech company that created ripples with its intent to make quality education accessible to all. The show works like motivational porn; its only aim is to bestow sainthood on its founder, Alakh Pandey, the good-hearted teacher who apparently can do no wrong.
Episode after episode, the show brings together many success stories of Physics Wallah. It highlights how the platform transformed the lives of average students from constrained socio-economic backgrounds. These narratives are interspersed with the challenges faced by Alakh and his co-founder, childhood chum Prateek. Together, they struggle to expand the scope of the brand without compromising on its ethos.
Hello Bachhon is an example of what one should not do with shows based on real-life stories. Every element is so carefully scrutinised that it does not upset anyone, and the dramatisation of the various accounts is sanitised, lacking any verve. All the personal episodes of the students boil down to one thing: Physics Wallah is the ultimate saviour of humankind. But how long can the show go on like this?
Alakh Pandey is not portrayed as a human, but a motivation machine who convinces every random child that education is the only stepping stone to progress in life. To establish how he has broken several ceilings to make Physics Wallah a force to be reckoned with, there is a childhood sequence that literally has him breaking walls to make easy money. The relentless hammering of the message gets tiring at every step.
The show keeps alternating between Alakh’s past and present challenges. It explores how he tolerated an unsupportive father, had the support of his friend all along, and the way he stood tall amidst several corporate buyout attempts. What makes this an exercise in boredom is the total absence of depth or quirk in the characterisation. It is like a straight line that simply keeps going on and on; there is no progress or evolution.
The struggles in all the stories are ironed out so comfortably. How exactly do the teachers make a difference? What strategies did they adopt for Physics Wallah to be a digital revolution? Alakh appears so impulsive with his decisions time and again, but everything works in his favour. If every frame is designed to impress the brains behind the company, it is not surprising that Hello Bachhon turns out to be a shallow mess.
Instead of investing in a limited set of characters, the creators take up stories of different students across episodes. Their backdrops and personal issues turn into props to glorify the brand to great heights. While the story of two bitter competitors who inspire each other to progress is among the pick of the lot, the final episode leaves you fuming. In that conclusion, even a student’s suicidal move is used as a PR strategy for Alakh.
Hello Bachhon is the final nail in the coffin for TVF’s soft advert-styled storytelling to prop up brands. It is simply an exercise in indulgence that makes you want to jump to the finishing line at the earliest.
Music and Other Departments?
Nilotpal Bora’s music provides no escape from the dullness of the show. It tries to make up for writing follies by over-dramatising Alakh’s struggles, and there is no freshness to the tonality either. All it wants to do is replicate a hit formula. For a show commissioned on Netflix, it is mounted reasonably well. The aesthetics are taken care of, be it the locations, colour choices, or costumes. However, the monotony in the writing and execution sucks the soul out of the proceedings.
Highlights?
Bits and pieces of the individual stories of the students
Visually pleasing
Drawbacks?
Almost everything – performances, writing and the flat execution
Made like a never-ending advertisement
Did I Enjoy It?
No
Will You Recommend It?
Definitely not
Hello Bachhon Web Series Reviewed by M9 News
