Writers’ rooms head South

As more web shows are being green-lit in South India, we are slowing seeing a collective effort to bring tightly-structured plots and speed to the table

If you have a favourite American TV show, it probably has a writers’ room. Where storylines are thrown about, episodes created, and scripts fleshed out. But in India, this collaborative model had less appeal, at least until recently. When global streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ came down, they brought with them industry standards from the West. Today, not only are writers’ rooms fast becoming a staple in Hindi programming, web series with multiple seasons have also highlighted the indispensability of a writer. Interestingly, the trend is trickling down to the South now, especially in Tamil and Telugu, and increasingly Kannada. The pandemic, which created new interest in southern content — SonyLiv acquiring Tamil releases, Jio Cinema picking up Malayalam titles, and the big OTT players making more intense inroads — has only helped accelerate this.