iWorld
OTT players up their focus on Tamil market
KOLKATA: In India, content is king and over-the-top (OTT) players are increasingly dishing out programming to audiences in their local flavour, moving beyond the Hindi and English speaking segment. As developments in these frontier markets gain momentum, Tamil has emerged as an obvious choice. Some domestic players have already planted a flag in this domain over the last couple of years, and now, the deep-pocket streaming colossuses are also moving in.
Disney+Hotstar, which started focusing on regional content since 2019, recently revealed its first Tamil original content slate, including feature films. A few days before that, Amazon Prime Video announced nine direct-to-digital premieres, and two of these big ticket releases are in Tamil language. Moreover, the service also started streaming its first ever Tamil anthology film Putham Pudhu Kaalai, a collaborative effort by five well-known Tamil directors. And while Netflix hasn’t made inroads in the regional market yet, the global streaming giant announced two Tamil anthologies in October.
“Indian audiences have really diverse tastes and enjoy films and series in several languages. At Netflix, we’re steadily growing our original and licensed film catalogue across multiple Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. We are honoured to showcase the brilliance of Tamil storytelling to our members in India and around the world through two new Tamil originals, Paava Kadhaigal and Navarasa. We will continue to engage with established and emerging creators from different parts of the country and hope to share their stories with the world,” Netflix India international original film director Srishti Behl Arya commented.
Then there are streaming platforms like MX Player, Zee5 that have gone the regional route since the beginning. For instance, MX Player’s Tamil original Queen was a runaway success that won several accolades. The platform’s chief content officer Gautam Talwar said the series was probably the largest bet any OTT platform took for a regional piece of content, but what it proved was that a good story in any language transcends all barriers. According to him, its performance in Telugu and Hindi has been equally phenomenal, along with witnessing a 6X increase in Tamil consumption on the platform post the launch of the show. He noted that the platform has a robust slate for Tamil audiences planned for 2021.
Moreover, the huge Tamil diaspora offers an opportunity to platforms beyond two-three states. “When we started conceptualising content including originals for the Tamil market, we knew that it is a huge opportunity, possibly as big as a Hindi venture. Tamil is also a language which allows you to go international very easily. So, you can end up targeting countries like Sri Lanka or Singapore. The language does not relate only to the Tamil Nadu market,” pointed out Zee5 programming head Aparna Acharekar.
The Tamil market is an interesting segment in terms of content creation too. The audience is a developed film, TV market and has great expectations due to the variety of content they are already exposed to, Acharekar said. MX Player’s Talwar also stated that the Tamil market has historically had a palette for differentiated and bold content, which gives platforms more leeway to experiment with unique narratives and storytelling styles.
“The big players always had the intent to invest in the regional market. Within the regional market, the largest markets are Tamil, Telugu. These are 65-70 per cent of the overall regional market. So, whenever one starts to move to regional, they will definitely choose Tamil, Telugu because it is a large audience base,” Elara Capital VP research analyst (media) Karan Taurani said.
Asked to share his observations on the recent activity by leading OTT players in the regional space, Taurani shared that most of the leading players have already exploited the Hindi and English speaking market. At present, there is a low-competition intensity as no streaming giants have made a mark in the market, other than Zee5, MX Player. In fact, none of the OTT players has aggressively invested yet, he added. This, despite the fact that the Tamil viewers have a huge appetite for content, given their higher than national average time spent on TV, cinema occupancy.
This recent trend of every player trying to expand their footprints – especially Amazon Prime Video, Netflix – may increase the competition significantly, especially for homegrown players. Zee5’s Acharekar seemed less worried as she is of the view that competition helps a market evolve, giving consumers more varieties in the narrative. Along with that, Zee5 possesses last two years’ learning in the episodic format, whereas others have been mainly experimenting with movies till now.
Elara Capital’s Taurani noted that as more players stream into the Tamil market, the production cost will go up as global deep-pocket players invest at a different scale. Hence, domestic players may feel the pinch of higher content production costs. However, he mentioned that all of these platforms have a different target audience.
“There is a huge audience base consuming online content right now, especially since the lockdown. Viewers have not only fast adopted OTT platforms as a medium of choice but are also investing time in watching and experimenting with different kinds of content. I think the more the content produced and served by platforms in regional languages, the more the overall category will grow and that is beneficial to all the platforms. So it’s not about the competition as much as it is about the category growth. Everyone is trying to tell stories in their own unique way and there is a large audience base to cater to for all these stories,” Talwar said.
iWorld
Why Peaky Blinders is one of television’s biggest hits that still deserves more attention
Six seasons, multiple awards and the release of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man bring the Shelby saga back into the spotlight
In the crowded universe of streaming content, only a handful of shows manage to leave a lasting cultural footprint. Peaky Blinders is overwhelmingly considered one of the biggest global hits of the past decade. Yet many viewers still haven’t fully explored the dark, gripping world of the Shelby family.
Originally produced for the UK’s BBC and later finding a massive global audience through Netflix, the series quietly grew from a British period drama into a worldwide streaming phenomenon.
Created by Steven Knight, the show follows the rise of the Shelby crime family in post-First World War Birmingham. What begins as a gritty street-gang story gradually expands into a sweeping narrative about ambition, politics, power and survival.
At the centre of the saga is Thomas Shelby, portrayed with extraordinary depth by Cillian Murphy. The casting of Murphy is widely regarded as perfect for the role. With piercing eyes, restrained dialogue and an almost hypnotic screen presence, he transforms Shelby into one of the most unforgettable characters in modern screen storytelling.
Murphy’s brilliance lies in his restraint. He rarely shouts or performs theatrically. Instead, a quiet stare, a calculated pause or a subtle shift in expression conveys the emotional storms within the character. Beneath the ruthless gang leader is a war veteran carrying trauma, guilt and loneliness. Murphy captures this complexity with remarkable precision, making Thomas Shelby both terrifying and deeply human.
Beyond its central performance, Peaky Blinders stands out for its unfiltered portrayal of reality. The show does not romanticise crime. Instead, it exposes the harsh social conditions of early 20th-century Britain, from poverty and class struggle to political extremism and the psychological scars left by war.
The series also presents powerful female characters who hold their own within the Shelby empire. Polly Gray, played by Helen McCrory, is the strategic backbone of the family and one of the most formidable figures in the story. Women in the series shape decisions, influence power structures and challenge the rigid social norms of the time.
Across six seasons, the narrative grows dramatically in scale. What begins in the smoky streets of Birmingham evolves into a story involving political conspiracies, fascism and international criminal networks.
The series has also earned significant critical acclaim. It won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Drama Series in 2018 and multiple National Television Awards for Best Drama, cementing its reputation as one of Britain’s most celebrated modern shows.
Another defining feature of the series is its iconic music. The show’s opening theme, Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, became instantly recognisable and widely associated with the Shelby universe. Combined with a powerful soundtrack featuring artists such as Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, the music helped shape the show’s dark, stylish identity and became hugely popular among fans.
And the Shelby story is not over yet.
In fact, its legacy is unfolding right now. The long-awaited feature-length continuation, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, was released on March 6, 2026, bringing the Shelby universe from streaming screens to cinemas and giving fans a new chapter in the saga.
For viewers who have not yet stepped into this world, the timing could not be better.
Six gripping seasons are ready to binge on Netflix. A new film has just arrived in theatres. And at the heart of it all stands one of the most magnetic performances in modern drama by Cillian Murphy.
So if Peaky Blinders has been sitting on your watchlist for years, this weekend is your moment.
So, by order of the Peaky fookin’ Blinders, consider this your cue to finally step into the ruthless world of Thomas Shelby. Pour yourself a drink, clear your schedule and press the play button. Because when the Peaky Blinders give an order, you listen.
