Nandita Das’ Zwigato is the story of an ex-factory floor manager. After losing his job in the pandemic, he is forced to work as a food delivery rider and struggles to make ends meet

From showing how relationships fared in the lockdown (Modern Love Hyderabad and Feels Like Ishq) to the financial struggle after people lost jobs (Unpaused and Zwigato) and the largescale chaos and uprooting caused by the first lockdown (Bheed and India Lockdown) – many movies and web series incorporated COVID-19 in their storylines. Three years since words like pandemic and lockdown became a permanent part of our vocabulary, we take a look at how pandemic stories were weaved into films and shows.

Most of the shows which have pandemic storylines are about the spirit of humanity rising above the tragedy. Unpaused: Naya Safar uses the second wave of the pandemic as a major plot point and narrates five inspiring stories. 

Geetanjali Kulkarni, who was in one of the episodes, spoke about filming a pandemic story, and said in an interview, “You feel heavy while shooting some scenes, as they remind you of things that either you have gone through or seen people close to you go through. But you have to keep your sanity and work.”

Nagesh Kukunoor’s episode My Unlikely Pandemic Dream Partner in Modern Love Hyderabad, starring Revathy and Nithya Menon, had an interesting story of a mother and a daughter living together during the lockdown. The show uses the background of the lockdown and pandemic to narrate the complexities of their relationship.

Revathy said in an interview, “I connected with the story immediately because mothers and daughters are very rarely portrayed in such a real way.”

In the episode Quaranteen Crush in Feels Like Ishq, director Tahira Kashyap Khurrana used the lockdown and quarantine period as a plot to narrate a love story.

Talking about filming during the pandemic, Tahira said in an interview, “The story of Quaranteen Crush is written by Gazal (Dhaliwal). When we were in Chandigarh, we developed the script and shot for three days. Prior to that, we did a lot of prep online. It was a new way of filmmaking for all of us at that time. We were a little jittery, but the process went really well.”

Commenting on the films and shows that have included COVID storylines, producer Girish Johar says, “From the last two years, filmmakers are facing this question that whether they should include COVID in the storyline or not. But now looking back at it after three years, while it is too early to relive tragedy, a good story prevails and finds its audience.”

The Family Man Season 2 ended with a scene mentioning the pandemic and the lockdown and it is being assumed that the third season will include COVID storyline. In 2020, several movie titles such as Coronavirus, One Weapon Corona and Corona – The Deadly Virus were registered, but the films are yet to be released or announced in most cases.

Madhur Bhandarkar’s India Lockdown follows four parallel stories of people stuck in the lockdown. Bhandarkar said in an interview that it was important for him as a filmmaker to document the trauma people have gone through, and he felt that after two years, people will definitely connect to the subject

In the episode My Unlikely Dream Pandemic Partner in Modern Love Hyderabad, Revathy and Nithya Menen explore the complexities of a motherdaughter relationship, as they are forced to spend time together during the lockdown

In the episode Quaranteen Crush from Feels Like Ishq, a teenage boy is seen crushing on a girl self-quarantining next door

Anubhav Sinha’s Bheed tells the story of the large-scale migration that was the result of the first country-wide lockdown. Sinha said he was primarily worried about two things – reliving the tragedy and making a black-and-white film. Reliving the tragedy through a series or a film is what most filmmakers are cautious about. So, even when a film or show includes the pandemic, it mostly is in the background and not the main story. Talking about the film’s performance, Sinha said in an interview, “People are writing pages and paragraphs (about their feelings of watching Bheed) and at the same time there is no one in the theatre. It is a bizarre feeling. I’m half happy and half intrigued.”