Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (Netflix)

This series, a prequel to the highly successful Bridgerton series by Netflix, is in short: brilliant. Written, produced and directed by Shonda Rimes, Queen Charlotte is the origin story of Queen Charlotte from the Bridgerton series.

Our familiar narrator, the voice of Julie Andrews, is back and relates that Queen Charlotte’s story is “fiction inspired by fact” which, frankly, it is. The Charlotte of the series, played by India Ria Amarteifio, is based on a re-imagined version of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz who was married to King George III. Both Charlottes are of royal pedigree and come from Germany.

Fictional Charlotte’s brother, Adolphus, enters her into a betrothal contract with George’s mother, Augusta (played by Catelyn Stark from Game of Thrones, otherwise also known as Michelle Fairley). Charlotte will marry George and become the next queen of England. Except, Charlotte is not an idiot — she’s mixed racial, strong-headed and well-educated and knows something’s wrong for the Queen Mother to come all the way across the continent to find a bride for her son.

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story tackles issues of race and prejudice while Jubilee fictitiously depicts scandals that have an element of truth. In the four-part documentary series Dancing on the Grave, reality is indeed stranger than fiction

Charlotte and George fall for each other right before the wedding, but soon after her earlier instincts prove to be right. George is hiding something. And he stays away from her to keep his secret.

Not unlike the real George, King George in the series is hiding his nearly losing struggle with his mental health or his “fits”. But as Queen Charlotte tells her children, marriage is hard. And this is supposed to be a love story that triumphs despite the odds, even if the odds seem insurmountable.

In the series we revisit younger versions of our favourite characters — Lady Danbury and Lady Violet Bridgerton. We visit their lives as widows in their later years, discussing their loneliness and rediscovering their sexuality (what they refer to as their “garden”) — a topic never touched upon in popular series.

Queen Charlotte also does what Bridgerton does not: have open conversations about race and prejudice. How “The Great Experiment” of inculcating coloured or black persons into British nobility came to be, the backlash as a result. And finally, black people in a European setting are not depicted as former slaves but from their own African nobility and sometimes richer than the royal family of England.

And finally, Queen Charlotte has a conversation about mental health and acceptance. And it does all of this, while retaining the romance and charm of the original Bridgerton series and keeping us entertained.

Jubiliee (Amazon Prime)

This series, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane (Sacred Games, Ghoul) is a feast for the eyes, ears, mind, everything. The characters and the storyline keep you on edge all of the time. There’s such a strong play on nostalgia, both in terms of films and history as it touches upon Partition, but doesn’t focus on it singularly as an event, but rather how the characters are affected by it. It came out on Amazon Prime during the Eid-ul-Fitr break which was perfect as we had an extra long break to do a marathon watch of this series. It was so worth it.

In the backdrop of the Partition, Jubilee is set in the late 1940s and early 1950s India. Jubilee is a series that tells the story of how the Indian film industry was born with the birth of a new country. Shrikant Roy (Prasenjit Chatterjee) is a successful film producer and studio owner married to the superstar of the time, Sumitra Kumari (Aditi Rao Hydari). His wife is having an affair with theatre actor Jamshed Khan (Nandish Singh Sandhu) in Kolkata. Jamshed Khan is also being pursued by Jay Khanna who hails from one of the more successful theatre-owning families in Karachi. Jamshed Khan disappears in the riots that took place during Partition.

And brace yourself, there are a lot of references to Karachi and to cities on this side of the border. One wanted to go out on a drive around the city afterwards and look for the theatres mentioned in the series.

Aparshakti Khurana (yes, the younger brother of Ayushmann Khurana) brilliantly essays the character of Madan Kumar, the stage name of Roy’s right-hand man, Binod Das. A dusky, ordinary looking man who lives, breathes, eats cinema, is unflinchingly loyal to Roy and does his dirty work very discreetly. He manages to bag himself a role as Roy’s studio, Bombay Talkies, next big star — Madan Kumar — quite by accident. He also knows what really happened to Jamshed Khan — he was with him.

Meanwhile, Jay Khanna ends up in India afterwards with his family as refugees and restarts his life from scratch and tries to make a name for himself in films — except Shrikant Roy tries everything in his power to sabotage him. Jay Khanna was his wife’s lover’s best friend, after all and the only one who can tell Sumitra Ji what happened to Jamshed Khan.

But Jay Khanna will make a film with or without Roy. Madan Kumar will go to any lengths to protect his secret. And Sumitra Devi will burn the studio to the ground if it means finding out what happened to Jamshed Khan.

A quick internet search will provide you with all of the articles pointing to the exact scandals and characters the film fictitiously depicts and shed light on the director Vikramaditya Motwane’s own personal connection to the stories and characters in Jubilee.

Dancing on the Grave (Amazon Prime)

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. Dancing on the Grave is a four-part documentary series that revisits a crime that shook India in the early ’90s. In terms of characters, this grim story has everything — a princess and a prince with a fairy tale love and life that didn’t work out, a conniving god man who swoops in to save her but seemingly with an agenda of his own. And a determined daughter whose love for her mother will see her doggedly go to the ends of the world to find her.

And she does, but just not in the way she — or we — were expecting. In books and films, good always triumphs evil but in real life things are always a little more complicated, a little gray. And that’s what Dancing on the Grave leaves us with.

Shakereh Namazie was a vibrant, rich and beautiful woman who came from one of the aristocratic families of Karnataka. Her parents were Gulam Hussain Namazie and Gauhar Taj Begum Mirza, the daughter of Sir Mirza Ismail, the Dewan of Mysore, Jaipur and Hyderabad.

When she was only a teenager she was married to businessman and diplomat Akbar Khaleeli with whom she reportedly had a great relationship. They had three daughters, travelled the world and lived a perfect life… or so it seemed. In 1985, Shakereh filed for divorce. As an ambassador, Akbar Khaleeli was always away and Shakereh was very lonely.

In came Murali Manohar Mishra, or Swami Shraddhananda, as he was known to others. He seemed to fill a void in Shakereh’s life and they got married. Shakereh was shunned and disowned by her family. And soon after, in 1991, she mysteriously disappeared.

Her daughter Sabah Khaleeli would spend the next few years leaving no stone unturned in finding her mother. She badgered both Swami Shraddhananda and the police until three years later, she finally made some headway. What she found happened to her mother was beyond heinous and the stuff one only thought existed in horror films.

In the series, we hear from the Shakereh’s family, the cops, neighbours etc but the big surprise at the end was that we also hear from another key individual in the crime: Swami Shraddahananda.

Published in Dawn, ICON, May 28th, 2023