blackberryhasem.blogg.se

1. #Malgudi days swami and friends all episodes serial#
2. #Malgudi days swami and friends all episodes series#
3. #Malgudi days swami and friends all episodes tv#

…with the ‘fanatical rage’ (The serial’s words, not mine) of the Christian missionaries.

#Malgudi days swami and friends all episodes serial#

Mildly troubling, and not ZOMG troubling, but troubling nonetheless.īarely five minutes into the first episode, the gods have made an appearance, and the serial seems to posit the calm and peaceful presence of the Hindu gods (with calm and peaceful music, no less): Some of the changes the serial makes, however, are a little troubling. There is, admittedly, a lot of Hindu imagery in Narayan’s original material, but most of this is either directly tied to the plot or presented with a dry irony and wry humour that mocks more than preaches.

#Malgudi days swami and friends all episodes series#

Whether this is true of the entire series remains to be seen, but the early episodes don’t set a very good precedent. Lovely.īut, rather worryingly, Malgudi Days seems to have some rather overt pro-Hindu imagery in this early story arc. If you look closely at the 'Thought for the Day' at the top, some of the proverbs used on previous days are still visible. It’s a lovely, almost casual detail visible only for a second, but brimming with subtext: My favourite, however, is the moral science question paper Swami has to answer. Their response manifests itself as a protest march (sort of visible in the background) the subsequent day, as Swami, Rajam, and Mani discuss their next move in tracking the Laddoo Thief (who is still at large): The series references all of these events in the backdrop of Swami’s early irreverent adventures, and there is a sense of continuity in this background political unrest that is most pleasing.įor example, one episode sees a group of men (in white caps, seated behind Swami) discussing an ‘appropriate response’ to the British injustices while Swami and Mani chase a laddoo thief:

The Gandhi-Irwin pact, signed in March, made promises for granting India ‘dominion status’, paving the way for the 1931 Round Table Conferences (the second of which Gandhi participated in) leading, eventually, to the signing of the Poona Pact the following year.ġ931 was also the year Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were hanged by the British government. That news places the first episode to be set in the early months of 1931 (Willingdon succeeded Lord Irwin officially in April).ġ931, of course, was a year of enormous political upheaval. Infact, we know the exact month and year 10 minutes into the first episode, through a newspaper Swami finds on the ground near the school (which he subsequently converts into a paper boat):

The series establishes, and reinforces, a sense of time and place very early, and very effectively. The attention to detail is quite excellent. The actors playing Swami and Mani nailed their parts perfectly (though some of Mani’s flourishes are a bit too theatric), and the initially cold, son-of-an-important-person Rajam, while a little stiff in the early episodes, settles into his part fairly competently. I was quite curious to see how it would translate into a serial. But Narayan’s books (particularly Swami and Friends) were deeply influential in my early years of reading books, and I’ve kept a copy of it with me for nearly a decade now.

In a way, I’m glad that I have no particular nostalgia for the series (even the apparently legendary theme song): I was much too young when it aired, and I didn’t catch any of its subsequent runs on TV. I finished the ‘ Swami and Friends‘ story arc in one marathon stretch, and I’m saving the rest of the episodes for the next few days (There are 39 in total).

#Malgudi days swami and friends all episodes tv#

This weekend I sat and watched the first volume of Malgudi Days, the much fondly-remembered Doordarshan TV serial from the late 80s.