Indian cinema needs to 'break bad', before Shah Rukh Khan remakes 'Breaking Bad'

Hypothetically, if Indian cinema is, say, about 50 years behind western cinema, then Indian television has at least a hundred years to go before it even comes within reach of western TV. The television set in the west has undergone a revolution. It has grabbed the viewers by the scruff of their necks, glued them to their couches, and demanded “watch!“Indian TV, on the other hand, is predominantly stuck in a whirlpool of regressive themes.

Look at what Game of Thrones has done to the world. It has plunged people head-first into hysteria by delivering fantasy, lore, violence, sex, politics, entertainment and thrill, all packed in a polished 55-minute run-time. It has bred misery on screen by depicting murder, betrayal, incest, war, and all kinds of other-worldly horrors, and we have fed off it. It has not shied away from anything, and it is bloody brilliant (literally). We just can’t get enough of it.

Now let’s rewind a decade. In 1999, HBO came out with a show on the American Mafia, based on the nitty-gritties of the life of a made-man. The Sopranos not only captured the ruthlessness of the mob, but also the idiosyncrasies of the personal lives of mob-men. When the Cosa Nostra wasn’t involved in killing, money laundering, intimidation, robbery and prostitution, what were they doing in their day-to-day lives? What about their families? Is a New Jersey mob boss a good father? Is he a good husband?

The Sopranos delved into that and took us along. The seminal show is considered as one of the greatest of all time, one that changed TV viewing forever. Along with HBO’s The Wire, which realistically depicted the triangle of crime, police and politics in Baltimore, The Sopranos defined the birth of a decade of TV viewing audiences that wanted more.

AMC’s Breaking Bad is a result of that decade’s demand. If The Sopranos and The Wire marked the beginning, Breaking Bad was the culmination of the decade’s television, the definition of what we want to see.

It was a show that told the story of a cancer-ridden chemistry teacher turned meth-kingpin, who hated the veggie bacon his wife served him for breakfast. Brilliantly acted throughout, Breaking Bad captured one man’s addiction to a professional life of crime and its repercussions on his private life.

And now we’re hearing that Shah Rukh Khan wants to remake the hit-series into a film, where he would love to play Walter White.

Here lies the trouble with that. Indian cinema/TV hasn’t yet realised that morality is ambiguous. We have heroes and villains, the black and the white. But through the years of the Indian silver screen, we have forgotten the grey. Tony Soprano, Jimmy McNulty, Walter White, and literally every character on Game of Thrones, are morally ambiguous. You like them initially and then you start hating them as you get to know more about them during the course of the show, or vice-versa. They are real, like us — part good, part bad, part rotten. Mainstream Indian films and TV shows don’t do that to us, except maybe Bigg Boss.

There’s no problem with adapting a good subject matter. But not when you intend to dilute it, scrub it off its essence to cater to what sells. In his interview to The Indian Express Shah Rukh says, “The Indian audience won’t be accepting of meth, drugs and the mafia.” So he intends to remake a watered down version of Breaking Bad, where Walter White doesn’t cook meth, or dissolve people in hydrofluoric acid. If it happens, the remake will probably only adapt the bald head, the french beard, and a probable dialogue that goes “Mujhe khatra nahi hai, main hi khatra hun”. We don’t want that.

Shah Rukh Khan, just like the entire Indian film-industry, needs to realise that the art of filmmaking doesn’t lie in creating something that your audience wants. It’s about making something that your audience didn’t even know it could like or want. We didn’t know we’d love Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Wire or The Sopranos. They demanded we watch them, and dared us to hate them. And they were awesome.

If Shah Rukh really wants to remake Breaking Bad, he can’t do away with essential themes of the show. He’ll have to get his hands dirty. Because clean hands only advertise Dettol.