Jio Hotstar tried its luck with an original series recently and it did not work so well. ‘Hai Junoon’ was released with almost zero hype and the show bombed on the very first day.
The show stars actors like Neil Nitin Mukesh, Jacqueline Fernandez, Siddharth Nigam, Sumedh Mudgalkar and more. And it has a total of twenty episodes, which is a bit too long for an Indian limited series.
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Twenty episodes of nearly forty minutes each is too long for a show like this and that too when the makers are not sure where to go with the plot.
The performances of Sumedh and Neil Nitin Mukesh are good but Jacqueline looks out of place once more like several of her other OTT projects.
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But the bigger reason behind the failure is probably the length of the show. It is treated as a musical with songs from Shankar Mahadevan, Sonu Nigam etc but the music fails to save the show’s face.
If the musical treatment could have been curbed, the show would be smaller and a little bit more interesting.
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People have already seen interesting stories about college rivalries and competitions. There is Chichhore and Por, even Student Of The Year and they all tell the stories within three hours with good songs too.
Introducing too many characters and not being able to develop them properly throughout the show is another reason behind people losing interest.
The flashy storytelling and prolonged gratification will not work in this genre if there is nothing extraordinary about the show. Shankar Mahadevan’s involvement too won’t make it anything like Bandish Bandits. The show probably would have been successful if there were around six episodes and a little less number of characters, but more developed.
