Do peacocks visit Tihar? In the prison-drama series Black Warrant, the central jail might be slithering with both literal and metaphorical snakes but the peafowl becomes the symbol of hope. “Birds don’t chirp there,” says creator Satyanshu Singh, reminiscing the time when he, along with showrunner and co-creator Vikramaditya Motwane, had visited Tihar prison for research. “For some reason, they know this is not the right place,” he adds. “But surprisingly, during our visit, we saw a peacock. It sat for thirty seconds and then flew away. That’s when we knew we had to keep them in the show.”The Netflix series, based on the book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer by journalist Sunetra Chaudhary and former jail superintendent Sunil Gupta, stars Zahan Kapoor as the latter, young, wet-behind-the-ears jailer learning the ropes of Asia’s biggest prison. He is bossed around by the calculative DSP Rajesh Tomar (Rahul Bhat) and has a live-wire Haryanvi Dahiya (Anurag Thakur) and a pacifying Punjabi Mangat (Paramvir Singh Cheema) as colleagues. “Everybody in Tihar, be it the prisoners or the jail staff, was a character straight out of a film,” says Vikramaditya. “There was a muscular senior police official in a well-fitted uniform, a DSP who was in charge of the kitchen was a big film buff.” Satyanshu adds, “And that too of world cinema. He was quoting (Akira) Kurosawa!”Black Warrant is ostensibly the only show in India set almost completely inside a prison. Vikramaditya says that for visual inspiration he only had western films and TV series like The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Mindhunter (2017-19). “There is a certain cinematic way in which the American and European jails are shown, we don’t have their counterparts in India,” he says. “Tihar doesn’t have those dim-lit corridors like they show in American dramas. It’s more open and has gardens. It’s actually quite peaceful.” Talking about their vision for the series, the makers say that more than knowing what to do, they were concerned about where not to go. “It was a big responsibility. We knew we were making the definitive prison show for India,” says Satyanshu. Satyanshu Singh“What we didn’t want to do was a depressing, grim, political commentary. We wanted to show character journeys and not have a voyeuristic but an empathic gaze.” Vikramaditya credits Satyanshu for having everything mapped out.“This time, I finally experienced what being a showrunner feels like. Whenever anybody used to come and ask me little details like how a cop should wear his cap or how many stars should be on his shoulder, I just redirected them towards Satyanshu,” says Vikramaditya. “It actually became a running joke, where we said that Satyanshu was the set’s Sunil Gupta.”Vikramaditya and Satyanshu go long back. The latter started his film journey by penning the poems written by the young protagonist in Vikramaditya’s debut feature Udaan (2010). Satyanshu, also a known screenwriting teacher, then went on to direct a children’s film called Chintu Ka Birthday (2019) for whose script, he says, Vikramaditya was “the biggest champion.”In a social media post, Satyanshu spoke about how, years after Udaan, he was approached by Vikramaditya to collaborate on the series. “May 26, 2020: Vikramaditya Motwane calls me. “I’m sending you a book. Read it and we’ll talk,” he wrote. “I felt Satyanshu was the person who would dig deep into something like this,” says Vikramaditya. “He loves research. If I tell him to read one book, I know he will devour five others.”Vikramaditya and Satyanshu might be the captains steering the ship, but there were other sailors on board too. Directors Rohin Nair, Arkesh Ajay, and Ambiecka Pandit helmed specific episodes. “They had to look seamless,” says Rohin, who has worked with Vikramaditya before on Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (2018) and AK vs AK (2020).“For me, it will be the biggest compliment if the episode directed by me blends in. But, if not for the audience, I know which parts of the episode were purely me.” Arkesh adds that although Vikramaditya was on sets every day he didn’t meddle with their process. “We had full freedom.He never sat down with us to dictate what needs to be done,” he says. Ambiecka goes on to add, “Vikram actually started his work before the shoot. He gave each one of us episodes that we were suited to direct.”Vikramaditya Motwane is a true versatile artist. Unlike his counterparts like Anurag Kashyap, Imtiaz Ali, and Dibakar Banerjee, he can’t be stamped with the badge of a certain kind of cinema. Following his debut with the coming-of-age film Udaan (2010), he created a period romance (Lootera, 2013), a survival-thriller (Trapped, 2017), and a vigilante-actioner (Bhavesh Joshi Superhero, 2018).On OTT, he helmed the gangster-saga Sacred Games (2018-19), meta comedy-thriller AK vs AK (2020), tinsel town drama Jubilee (2023), and recently the screenlife-thriller CTRL (2024). “People, however, have told me that the running theme in my filmography is trapped characters trying to find their salvation,” says Vikramaditya. “I don’t know about that. What excites me is a new idea, a new story, taking it and building it up from scratch. It is the excitement of the chase.”
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