THE NEW TEEN SPIRIT

A host of web series driven by young characters are enthusiastically claiming a long-neglected space in Indian cinema

- SUHANI SINGH

For filmmakers Ananya Banerjee and Gauravy K. Chawla, shooting their latest Amazon Prime horror series, Adhura, was no easy task. No, it wasn't the show's dark, eerie theme, nor the challenge of condensing a 15-year timeline into seven episodes. It was the fact that a majority of the actors on the set were children. That meant a lot of things. It meant that in the middle of a shot, a child actor once tapped Banerjee on the shoulder, asking her to reprimand another for "showing him the middle finger". It meant rescheduling shoots when the children "weren't in the mood". It meant having to show both patience and care when dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the children, the youngest among whom was just nine years old, and the oldest 17.

Adhura is just one of a slew of recent shows that have chosen to not only portray the psyche of the young but also delve deep into it. Last month, Disney+ Hotstar released School of Lies, a crime drama set in a boarding school, where young actors stole the spotlight from the adults. Prior to that, Netflix enjoyed one of its biggest successes with Class (2023), an adaptation of the Spanish teenage crime thriller Elite (2018-). That's not all. The Viral Fever (TVF), considered the pioneers in making shows for the young adult (YA) genre, released the second season of Yeh Meri Family (on Amazon miniTV), in which a 16-year-old girl was the central character. It has also developed the Telugu version of its popular Hindi series Hostel Daze, centred around engineering students, which will premiere on Amazon Prime on July 13.