Akka

It’s the usual game of cloak and dagger, blood and gore, only cloaked under the garb of a matrilineal society. In the very first episode, we go back to the history of these fictional places where women once ruled. In post-Independence India, they still call the shots, literally and metaphorically. Lineage runs from mother to daughter, marriage is forbidden and men are at best companions and at worst, wimps. On the face of it, what can be more progressive and delectable than women being hailed as Akka? Men here are no more than superfluous appendages. Keerthy Suresh is Bhavani, who straddles this world and your screens with indomitable strides of strength. For those who dare to cross her path, she does not squirm away from resorting to killing in a brutal fashion.

Two parts Wonder Woman’s feminist ethos, two parts Game of Thrones-inspired bloody, backstabbing fervour, a garnish of Milan Luthria’s school of retro kitsch in the vein of Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, The Dirty Picture and what have you, Akka, a five-part series by writer and director Dharamraj Shetty, chronicles the administrative chops of a matriarchal society standing up to the vendetta of a shunned sister after she enlists the aid of spiteful gangs and resentful tribes. Created under the YRF banner, Akka’s lavishly scaled, visually sumptuous yarn fetishes the idea of female leadership. But its wishy-washy feuding over matters of business and bloodline neither justifies its male loathing nor makes a strong case for women as superior leaders. On paper, a self-governed sisterhood’s patriarchy-smashing ideals carry immense weight. Reducing it to a cliched catfight mars its potential quite a bit. All the same, Akka isn’t without its attractive attributes.

Crime sagas traditionally use women as passive anchors. Going beyond the template of mothers, sisters and daughters, Akka centres on an 800-year-old sisterhood that controls the criminal underworld and gold trade in the fictional South Indian region of Perunuru. Dressing progressive thought in a commercial gaze, the Yash Raj Films’ series seems to tweak genuine subversion into pulpy, mass-market dialoguebaazi, ultimately strengthening the very systems of oppression it claims to dismantle. But a deeper look suggests the narrative emerges from a cynical school of thought which argues that when women assume absolute power, they inevitably mirror the behavioural patterns of their male counterparts.

Feisty female gangsters, matrilineal linkages, picturesque period settings, strong women leading from the front: can anything be better? Turns out, not really. When it’s a Yashraj production, style is a given, and there’s plenty of that strewn around the strikingly shot Akka, with its sprawling homesteads and old rivalries and new contenders. What there’s not in such lush abundance, is substance: the plot, which takes its time getting to a tipping point by the fifth episode, at which point there’s a pause till presumably the second part of the show, that keeps giving way to gratuitous spurts of violence and superfluous stylistic flourishes.

Indian streaming turns ten this year, and Akka is what Netflix has to show for it. The platform introduced itself to the country with Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane’s S_acred Games_, a series with a worldview and the nerve to be bleak. Now we get a Netflix show set in Pernuru, a fictional kingdom ruled by women where an outsider arrives and threatens the peace. It could have been a chance to rethink the gangster genre. But Akka is happy to imagine a female version of it, with the same swagger and the same rituals of loyalty and betrayal, only the pronouns changed, leaving the genre otherwise untouched. That complacency says everything about the moment. Creators and platforms alike treat streaming as an afterthought. Netflix still hasn’t cracked the country, which has no single media appetite and no single disposable income, so its shows keep falling back on the grammar of television: the loud score, the lots of mutual glaring between characters, the plot that explains itself through expository dialogue, and a narrative content to drag itself to oblivion.

Akka on Netflix is unlike anything you’ve seen before. Set in an unusual world where women call the shots, this series creates a universe governed by power, loyalty, fear and legacy. It is a society where women don’t just occupy positions of authority; they fiercely protect what belongs to them, passing down their influence and traditions from one generation to the next. But every empire has its vulnerabilities, and when an outsider arrives to challenge a legacy that has ruled Pernuru for years, the carefully guarded world begins to unravel. At the centre of this conflict are two formidable women. Bhavani, played by Keerthy Suresh, is a powerful figure whose authority and legacy come under threat from Rudra, portrayed by Radhika Apte. Rudra is a ruthless rebel with her own ambitions, and she is determined to challenge the established order and claim what she believes is rightfully hers. What follows is a gripping battle of egos, ambition, revenge and survival, with the two women refusing to back down.

आम धारणा है कि सत्ता की बागडोर यदि महिलाओं के हाथ में हो या ताकतवर पदों पर उनकी भागीदारी ज्यादा हो, तो समाज बेहतर हो सकता है, क्योंकि महिलाओं में दया, करुणा और दूसरों का हित सोचने जैसे भाव जन्मजात होते हैं। मातृसत्ता से संचालित काल्पनिक राज्य पेरनुरु पर केंद्रित वेब सीरीज ‘अक्का’ की नींव शायद इसी सोच पर पड़ी होगी। सीरीज की शुरुआत में राज्य की मुखिया यानी अक्का कहती भी है कि पेरनुरु की समृद्धि और भारत के बाकी राज्यों के मुकाबले नौ गुना बेहतर साक्षरता दर की वजह उसका मातृतंत्र है। ऐसे में यह समझना मुश्किल है कि आखिर यह समृद्ध और शिक्षित राज्य सोने की तस्करी और शराब के धंधे के लिए क्यों जाना जाने लगा? वहां की महिलाएं डॉक्टर, वकील और वैज्ञानिक बनने के बजाय बंदूक और कटार चलाने तक क्यों सीमित रह गईं? पेरनुरु का यह पतन ही ‘नेटफ्ल‍िक्‍स’ की इस नई क्राइम-थ्र‍िलर सीरीज की सबसे बड़ी कमजोरी है।