The new Star Plus show P.O.W. – Bandhi Yuddh Ke, about two Army soldiers accused of espionage, is perfectly timed. Nikkhil Advani’s official adaptation of the Israeli television drama Hatufim is going on air in a charged climate – Indo-Pak relations are on the boil, and Army units on both sides of the border are engaged in regular cross-fire. The show will be premiered on November 7 at 10.30 pm and will run from Monday to Saturday.
Hatufim was also the basis of the American TV show Homeland, starring Claire Danes as Central Intelligence Agency officer Carrie Mathison and Damian Lewis as American soldier Nicholas Brody, who is brainwashed by the Al Qaeda into becoming a terrorist. P.O.W. appears to be closer to Hatufim, which traces the experiences of three Israeli soldiers who return home after 17 years of captivity in Lebanon. Sartaaj Singh (Purab Kohli) and Imaan Khan (Satyadeep Mishra) escape from a camp in Pakistan, where they have been held since the Kargil war in 1999. The men are put on the government’s watch list as possible Pakistani spies.
In the first episode, Singh and Khan flee captivity and enter India, only to be captured by the army. Their identities are revealed on television, and they reunite with their families, including their respective wives Harleen (Amrita Puri) and Nazneen (Sandhya Mridul).
The 126-episode show marks Advani’s television debut after years of directing films, including Kal Ho Na Ho (2003), Patiala House (2011) and D-Day (2013). During a panel discussion at the Mumbai Film Festival, where the first episode was premiered, Advani said that the project especially interested him because it was a finite series. “I see it as making 22 films,” he said. “I did not want to compromise on anything.”
P.O.W. is nothing like Homeland in its tone and treatment, Advani said. “Indians love emotions, and for me, the story became not just about the soldiers returning home, but also the women and families they had left behind, who were also the real prisoners of war,” he said.
Will P.O.W. succeed where the Indian version of 24 failed? Television is dominated by soaps, supernatural dramas and reality television shows, and dramas face an uphill task in trying to woo viewers away from the screechy and manipulative fare that dominates the ratings.
The first episode of P.O.W. indicates that emotion combined with solid drama will play a big role in wooing viewers. The performances are naturalistic, the dialogue is simple, and the background score is perfectly tuned to the milieu. It’s far removed from Naagin and Bigg Boss, and represents a small step in the direction of reigniting interest in a kind of storytelling that has all but disappeared from our small screens.
