Following the lead of TV OGs like Crime Patrol and India’s Most Wanted, OTT platforms are wooing desi audiences with true crime documentaries that took place in our backyard
In the House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths, director Leena Yadav tries to decode why 11 members of a family chose to hang
"Documentary is just a format of storytelling,” says Tanya Bami, director, International Originals, Netflix, “I think everyone is curious about India, and it has so many stories to tell. With true crime shows, yes, why you discover them is the curiosity for crime, but eventually it becomes about human behaviour, psychology, sub-cultures, our upbringing, ambitions.... they are stories about people at the end.” Bami and Netflix’s calculation seem to be working.
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After the Squid Game fever died down, OTT lovers have found a conversation starter in the House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths. The three-episode special series, directed by Leena Yadav (also known for her 2015 film Parched) is about the family of 11 in Delhi’s Burari neighbourhood, who were found hanging in a strange formation one morning in 2018. Was it occult, a fallout of mental health issues, or supernatural occurrences that led to this strange phenomenon is what the documentary tries to address. It’s been described by viewers as bone chilling and eerie—almost like they were watching fiction. Yadav, says that she took up the Burari case only because she felt there was much more to the picture than people knew. “I just hope everyone sees it with empathy and not judgement.”
Producer Claire Cahill and her crew followed the Bengaluru police as they solved crimes of murder and kidnapping for the docuseries, Crime Stories: Indian Detectives
The trend of OTT audiences watching true crime documentaries may have started with 2018’s Wild Wild Country, which followed the rise of Osho, and the ultimate decline. Then came Bad Boy Billionaires in 2019, which followed the fate of industrialists Vijay Mallya, jeweller Nirav Modi and businessman Subroto Roy. They all may seem different when compared with the Burari deaths, but they too, had a true crime at the centre of the narrative. But India also has a history of TV viewers watching whodunits. There was India’s Most Wanted, hosted by Suhaib Ilyasi, who was caught later for allegedly killing his own wife. There is also Savdhan India, and Crime Patrol amongst the most watched. It’s clear, Indians like their crime.
Leena Yadav, Siddharth Jain and Anup Soni
As the director of the Mallya episode in Bad Boy Billionaires, Dylan Mohan, says, “In a panel I was on, Tanya Bami said that 76 per cent of their Indian subscribers have watched a documentary title in the past 12 months. True crime is a safe bet. Sometimes, the only problem is that the social issue that one wants to bring up should not get overshadowed by the blood lust,” says Mohan, adding that he feels that it’s a phase that India is going through. “With true crime, you fight the perception of a documentary being boring and factual. Why do platforms want true crime—it’s a return on investment as it keeps getting watched even years later, while drama, if not watched in the first 10 days, drops off.”
Tanya Bami, Claire Cahill and Dylan Mohan
Sidharth Jain, founder of StoryInk, says that India has always been watching crime shows. The reason behind the sudden uptick could be because the “premium audiences” who watch OTT, have discovered them now. “We don’t watch TV, which is by appointment. You have to tune in one day and at one time. So, it’s more about the medium than content. Savdhan India will have a much bigger audience than Burari,” feels Jain, who explains why making true crime documentaries is hard in India. “We have no access to archival footage—either pictures or videos, unlike our American counterparts. Burari happened in 2018, so it still had some footage, which is what makes a documentary come alive. But, it’s a step in the right direction.”
Live footage is something that Claire Cahill, series producer of Crime Stories: India Detectives, had a lot of. Directed by Jack Warrender and N Amit, the Netflix docuseries deals with everything from murder to kidnapping, and is a peek into the lives of the investigators in the Bengaluru police force. Cahill came to Bengaluru in 2018, and realised that the city was a microcosm of the rest of India, and that it would be interesting to know what was happening in its crime world. That the Bengaluru police commissioner of Whitefield was supportive and gave her crew access, was what makes the documentary so immersive. “We just had one major rule—don’t interfere. In the end, it’s all about seeing how people are behaving in a city that’s growing rapidly.”
Anup Soni, who hosted Sony’s Crime Patrol for eight years (2010 to 2018), says that crime is popular, no matter what format. “If you say you are making a documentary on water shortage, nobody will watch it. People have a voyeuristic mind in India, it’s like when an accident takes place, people stand around and watch.” And though Soni admits it’s that strange curiosity that drives people, he also says that if in the end, the crime documentary has information that makes life better for an individual, it’s beneficial. “What did we learn from Burari? We realise that no tantrik beliefs are going to help us or save our lives. And hopefully, we won’t do that in our own lives. It’s the andar ki baat that helps us eventually, and that’s why crime documentaries should be watched.”
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