In publishing, “pulping” often refers to the act of destroying the available, unsold print run of books that is with the publishing house. While this may sound a bit dramatic, books are pulped all the time. Sometimes, it’s due to the defect in the printing stage, and in others, the stock is rejected by the publisher for it is deemed unfit to be sold and is thus, then, pulped.

Having said that, Prime Video’s latest original offering in India, aptly named series called Bestseller, should have been pulped from the get-go. I am surprised, truly, that even with this as the final product, it made its way on the platform. That’s not the worst part. 

People are truly promoting it. 

Bestseller officially ranks in my list of top 10 worst Originals from India and it’s absolutely commendable for it to land there. I haven’t seen anything this awful in a while and it made for great viewing, ngl. Truly, exceeding all my cringexpectations. This is truly one of the biggest disasters and well marketed at that. 

I don’t understand the recent kind of interest in screenplay writing towards the life of writers. Prime, as a platform hosting and producing these originals, is really chasing the trope of asshole writers ruining life, one bad book at a time. When Gehraiyaan did it, I accepted cause they were not annoying in their retelling. When Bestseller, a series that has a whole book in the center of the plot, fucks up the premise of a writer’s life in this godawful manner, you have got to ask yourself, why did you have to pick “writer” as a profession in your screenplay to convey a goddamn story? You could have been an awful influencer or a dickwart creator online. You chose to fuck up one thing that’s sacred to writers: writing.

Repeat after me, not all writers. #NOTALLWRITERS

We are not all dickwarts and difficult people in relationships or asshole to our partner and strangers etc etc. Writers are chill and often lazy and they rarely take publishing folks for granted, especially the way the gigachad Tahir Wazir (Arjan Bajwa) does in the series. I get it, his character had to be written like a dick, but dude, you can make your dick (character) relatable. All that Tahir Wazir needed was one tight slap as a kid or at some point but no, let’s show him argue even when he’s fighting his case in the court. For fuck sake.

I can’t start and end my list of problems with the series. Every action has to be uttered in the show, every emotion has to be described and every plot point has to be narrated by the characters. For a series that is based around writing, the writing team of the show takes writing a bit too seriously. In an episode leading to climax, a brother-sister duo talks about avenging the lives of their parents; the brother literally narrates their respective ages to ask the sister. I mean, you can see they are kids, you can see the progression over 6 episodes to build that part up but no, let’s get the character to recite their age and highlight that they were just children as if the camera isn’t showing us already. This is just one dialogue of the 8 episode series. Good luck getting yourselves more examples of the same through the run-time.

Part of me is devastated because the cast on board worked hard to perform badly. I had high expectations from Shruti Haasan and Mithun Chakraborty and both of them gave a performance worthy of a Golden Kela each. Is there a web equivalent of it yet? Arjan Bajwa came equipped with one look and reaction: aggression; to his defense, he was portraying an inferior Indian man but that didn’t deliver. Gauahar Khan tried her best to save the series but despite her best attempts, she couldn’t.

You have got to question the writers and the directors on part of this amazing show put together. Did your ensemble cast forget how to act altogether or was this a part of the Bestseller experiential package? Part of the problem (or rather all of it) rests on the directorial team than anyone else. How can you approve to work with a script this verbose and nonsensical at that and approve performances this shoddy and despite it all, have it go live on an international platform? It’s a question that keeps me awake at night despite all the heavy workouts I pull in the day to exhaust me to sleep peacefully. Occupational hazards, especially when I stream stuff like this for a living.

Mukul Abhyankar and team’s Bestseller on Prime is a shriller, not Thriller. I’m afraid, we’ve come too far and maybe we should have just burned all the books like Ray Bradbury (soft) suggested us to do long back.

The series is available for streaming on Prime Videos in India.

(If you like this piece, please consider monetarily supporting my work. It doesn’t cost to hit the like and the follow button either.)