By Sujeet Rajan

June 18: Watch ‘Suzhal – The Vortex’, an absolutely riveting and engrossing eight-part original Tamil crime and mystery thriller on Amazon Prime.

Created and written by Pushkar and Gayatri, and co-directed by Bramma and Anucharan, the series – all episodes of which are now streaming – is an instant classic because of its superb story, direction, cinematography and acting.

Suzhal is as good as my top three favorite web serials from India: ‘Sacred Games’, ‘The Family Man’, and ‘Paatal Lok’.

There are stories within layers of stories in Suzhal, with the excellent characters exemplifying small town India, where everybody knows everybody else, and truth is often confronted with superstition, religion, and adherence for beliefs and customs. To put it in a nutshell, though: it all begins one night of mayhem, when a factory burns down, and a teen girl goes missing in a small town in Tamil Nadu where a 7-day religious festival has just started. The roller coaster ride of a mystery begins from there.

Suzhal also marks the advent of quality regional web series from India on a mainstream streaming platform, with a global audience in mind. It’s available in more than a dozen languages.

Watch out Bollywood! This could be yet another area where episodic films from regional markets for global streaming platforms might dwarf ones made in Hindi.