Is 'Sacred Games' Netflix’s New 'Narcos'?

Netflix's first Indian original series,  Sacred Games, was released on Friday and so far, audiences are loving it!

The crime drama, co-directed by Vikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap, and starring Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, has received positive reviews from critics around the world.

Sacred Games revolves around the life of a police officer, Sartaj Singh, bound by an anonymous call one morning promising him an opportunity to capture the most-wanted criminal Ganesh Gaitonde.

However, critics and fans are comparing  Sacred Games to  Narcos, according to Hindustan Times.

“Netflix has chosen a production from the same genre as a previous success, the American-Colombian Narcos,” notes Mike Hale in his review for the New York Times. “While the series is a fair approximation of the kind of multigenerational, lightly fantastical Asian, African or South American novel that routinely lands on American best-seller lists, its picaresque, expansive storytelling and literary flavour are not what American audiences are used to in a crime series,” he added.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “ Sacred Games is filled with those aforementioned storytelling quirks that viewers will likely just go with as they are distracted by the enticingly foreign elements that colour a familiar story that their brain tries to process, like a simultaneously recognizable but tweaked narrative. Many of Netflix’s most popular international series thrive on this slight disconnect — a story that feels familiar, American even, but is told through a lens that lets the other side of the world in.”

Based on Vikram Chandra’s 900+ page novel, the series’ creators hope that the success of the first season will earn them a greenlight to continue the story.

Have you been following the series?