‘The Revolutionaries’ series review: Nikkhil Advani’s glossy historical fades away into reverential spectacle

After working with a meticulous appeal in Freedom at Midnight, Advani imagines history within the vessel of a masala entertainer in The Revolutionaries, replete with punchy dialogues, dreamy romantic songs and a pacy cat-and-mouse chase between the monstrosity of General Reginald Dyer and the adventures of Rash Behari Bose (Bhuvan Bam), a seemingly simpleton man working in a chemistry lab but secretly harbouring rebellious dreams. The series sets off with the assassination attempt on the Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, on the eve of Delhi’s declaration as the new capital of the Empire in 1912. Along with an accomplice, Bose is shown heroically throwing a bomb at the incoming procession of the Viceroy. Dyer is assigned to investigate the conspiracy, which soon takes him to the Sanyal mansion in Benaras, where a sophisticated underground movement is slowly taking shape for a violent overthrow of the Empire.

This is where we meet Sachindranath Sanyal (Rohit Saraf), a novice in the akhara, training to devote himself to the freedom struggle. His track has a coming-of-age reckoning mixed with an often distracting love angle that explores his bond with Pratibha Lahiri (Pratibha Ranta), a fictionalised version of his real-life partner. Even though the two share a lively screen presence, Rohit and Pratibha struggle to belong in this world, as Advani imagines them with a contemporary outlook. His intent to infuse relatability into historical retelling falls apart as it becomes difficult to separate the effects of the spectacle from factual outcomes.

Rohit Saraf in ‘The Revolutionaries’
| Photo Credit:
Prime Video

Moreover, as the show progresses, the idea of time and space is lost under VFX-infused images and a pulpy background score. Much of its visual vividness, which comes with a blend of pastel colours and incandescent lighting, only paints a romantic picture of the past — one that seems cut off more from hyper-stylistic comic strips than a history book. Due to this, the psychological struggles of choosing the path of violence are overshadowed by a heroic resolve, reducing the extraordinary journeys of Sachindranath Sanyal and Rash Behari Bose into an action set-piece where history only appears to fill-in the blind spots.

Their ideological fervour is seldom touched upon, and there’s more time spent on emotional excesses. What is it that prompted Rash Behari Bose to take up arms? How did Sachindranath Sanyal’s experience during the Ghadar uprising provide a base for him to later form the Hindustan Socialist Republic Association, which would bring together Bhagat Singh and others? These are questions that The Revolutionaries doesn’t set out to answer, as it singularly focuses on individual moments of bravery, often risking picturing the freedom fighters as hot-blooded youngsters harbouring violent dreams, as seen in a sequence where Rash imagines putting a bullet in the Viceroy’s head and shooting away all Britishers to achieve freedom.

All the efforts to create a mood and atmosphere take away realism from the proceedings, making the revolutionaries feel more like characters from an action-adventure game. Barring Bhuvan Bam, who instils a lived-in charm in his performance, the rest of the cast don’t quite infuse a sense of believability into their acts. It also doesn’t help that the stuffy production and overdone costumes call attention to themselves rather than quietly blending into the lives of the people it seeks to immortalise.

And so, at its optimum, the show begins to feel more like a fantasy. It indifferently recreates historic moments as bullet points. The 1907 Pagdi Sambhal Jatta movement led by Bhagat Singh’s uncle Ajit Singh against oppressive agricultural laws is briefly shown in an episode with the cultural depth of a museum label. Even the life-altering resolve of the Ghadar movement finds a softer release without the contextual complexities.Hiding somewhere in the show’s gloss is a representation of an oppressive regime that tramples down dissent from its youngsters, uses brute force against independent thought and uses fear to continue its rule — all factors resonant with contemporary times. But The Revolutionaries drives away without addressing these pressing themes and floats in the ether, where the present is forgotten, the past is deified and history is isolated.