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.”

Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor has had quite a journey. His recent outing, the Telugu adaptation of the web series Modern Love, saw him direct three shorts of the six-part anthology and serve as its showrunner, too. “Being a showrunner was an alien experience,” he says, and goes on to explain, “I was to direct only two shorts in the anthology and I had to take on another because I couldn’t find the right filmmaker. Being a showrunner, there’s separation anxiety, but letting it go is beautiful. You see some things you never saw... It’s a huge learning experience.”

Making Modern Love Hyderabad involved going through 200 stories from the NYTimes column after which the show is named, picking 25 from them and finalising six. “It was madness! Our job was to pick six stories that would appeal to the Telugu audience. I’ve rarely done something like this. I have never worried about the audiences whenever I have set out to make something. This was different.”

Food is known to be an integral dimension to Hyderabad, and Kukunoor was keen on bringing it out through a project. One of his segments in the show gave him that scope. “My idea was to make food appealing authentically, without employing stereotypes. I told my cinematographer Sangram Giri not to glamourize it,” he says.

On the whole, he calls making Modern Love Hyderabad a satisfying, joyous shoot. “I had to adapt material that’s not mine, build on it, give it to other directors, step back and act like a non-interfering dad. I worked in a Telugu environment that’s still new to me and I am reaching out to a new audience. My own stories gave me the chance to associate with A-list talent and portray three different relationships,” he wraps up.

It’s spontaneity over prep for Revathy, an idea that Nithya Menen too subscribes to. Which is why the two actors were eager to see how they would feed off each other’s energy if they shared a frame. The wait, they admit, was long. But with Modern Love Hyderabad, their plan has finally materialised. Director Nagesh Kukunoor’s short film, My Unlikely Pandemic Dream Partner, sees Revathy and Menen play a mother-daughter duo.

“The good thing about Nagesh is that he doesn’t like too much prep. I don’t believe in [preparing intensely] either; I feel the intuitive reaction from actors is always better. Nithya and I are similar in the way we work. Working with her was long overdue. A few projects that we were supposed to do didn’t work out. So, when this happened, we took it up immediately,” laughs Revathy.

That the short film centred on two strong and independent women was another incentive. Menen elaborates, “As a mother-daughter duo, we fight a lot, but we also make up. Our characters have strong opinions.”

The senior actor-director notes that the Amazon Prime Video offering is an example of a shift in the way women’s roles are being written. “The OTT world is amazing for middle-aged women [actors]. The characters are not reduced to sisters or mothers; there are strong roles written for 50-plus women. At my age, I am enjoying the offers that I am getting,” states Revathy, who has also wielded the directorial baton for Salaam Venky, a Hindi feature film with Kajol.

“I am in a phase where I want to be the captain of the ship. Kajol is a lot like us; she is [present in] the moment. I enjoyed collaborating with her.”

After a successful run of Modern Love Mumbai, Amazon Prime Video is gearing up for its second edition of the international series, Modern Love Hyderabad.

One of the episodes titled My Unlikely Pandemic Dream Partner brings together two powerhouse actors, Revathy and Nithya Menen, and is directed by Nagesh Kukunoor. Set in the heart of Hyderabad, Kukunoor says the episode marries his two loves — the old-world charm of Hyderabad and local cuisine. Interestingly, the famed Hyderabadi cuisine bowled Menen over so much that she even tasted non-vegetarian food. 

“I had been practicing vegetarianism for a while, and when I told the team about it, they were amazed,” said Menen. She elaborated that the special chef who was invited to cook the Hyderabadi delicacies also made vegetarian versions of those dishes for the shoot. 

“There was so much Hyderabadi food. Finally, at one point, I was like, just give me the chicken, I’ll just eat it, it’s fine, I have to look authentic. I keep telling them, they turned me [into] a non-vegetarian. There was too much to eat!”