Arguing that Bard Of Blood wasn't targeted at urbane audience, Emraan Hashmi says its success has spawned new season
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; November 28, 2019)

"As an audience, I genuinely liked the show," begins Emraan Hashmi when we ask him about Bard Of Blood, the Netflix original series that marked his web debut earlier this year. The espionage thriller, which arrived amidst much hype earlier this year, is gearing up for a second season. "The [initial] work has begun. We don't have a date yet, but we'll probably start shooting sometime mid-next year. The first season was entirely inspired from Bilal's [Siddiqi] book. But now, we will go beyond the book, using the cliffhanger of the final episode as our cue," shares the actor.

Although its cinematography and engaging performances won praise, the seven-part thriller — which marked the first digital offering from Shah Rukh Khan's stable, Red Chillies Entertainment — received a lukewarm response. Bring this up with Hashmi, and he asserts that the show achieved the goals that it set out to.

"One has to understand the agenda behind the show. It was made to penetrate into the mass segments while maintaining international standards. Because of this brief, there was exposition in the show, which didn't sit well with the elite audience. Only five per cent of the audience shot holes in the series. If we would have tried to appease them, we would have lost the masses. If we [designed it] to appease the metro audience, we'd lose out on a major chunk of, say, North India. Netflix doesn't give out numbers, but they are happy to have penetrated into segments that they weren't able to, six months back."