New series on Satyajit Ray’s popular detective character Feluda coming up on OTT

Parambrata Chatterjee, the Bengali actor who won hearts in his debut Hindi film ‘Kahaani’ a decade ago, will be seen in the role of Feluda, the iconic detective character created by Satyajit Ray, for a new web series. The series, ‘Shabash Feluda’, will be streamed on Zee Bangla from May 5, three days after the 102nd birth anniversary of Ray, director Arindam Sil said.

‘Shabash Feluda’ will be a 10-episode series based on Ray’s story ‘Gangtok-e Gondogol’ (Problems in Gangtok) in which the detective, who has been vacationing in the scenic capital of Sikkim, will end up the mysterious death of a businessman.

“On the occasion of Ray’s 102nd birth anniversary, we are announcing this as a tribute to the great filmmaker and gifted writer and illustrator,” Sil said. ‘Gangtok-e Gondogol’ was first published in a literary magazine in 1970 but this series will see the characters in the present time.

“Now, Feluda will be in sync with contemporary times. And from the beginning, I wanted to cast Param (Parambrata Chatterjee) in the lead role. We want to connect with the audience of today,” Sil said.

In the original stories, Feluda used to smoke cigarettes without a filter, but now he will be seen puffing filtered cigarettes, he said. Rwitobroto Mukherjee will play the character of Topse (Tapesh Ranjan Mitter), Feluda’s cousin and Man Friday. Chatterjee himself had essayed the role of Topse earlier.

A female character of an IB officer was introduced in the series which was not there in the original story, said Sil whose earlier works on detective characters include other popular sleuths such as Byomkesh Bakshi and Sabar.

This is, however, Chatterjee’s second stint as Feluda. He essayed the character earlier on another OTT six years ago. “That was an Indo-Bangladesh joint venture which did not work out after a few episodes. This time, it is being done in a much bigger way,” Chatterjee said.

Earlier, Soumitra Chattopadhyay, Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Indranil Sengupta were made Feluda for big screens and television at different times. Tota Roy Chowdhury also essayed the iconic character for a web series.

“I know there will be comparison with others who had been cast as Feluda earlier. This is quite normal as people are emotionally involved with immensely popular literary works,” Chatterjee said.

From the 35 Feluda stories written by him, Satyajit Ray had directed two films – Sonar Kela (The Golden Fortress, 1974) and Jai Baba Felunath (The Elephant God, 1979). However, the maestro’s first detective film was ‘Chiriakhana’ (The Zoo, 1967) which was centred on Byomkesh Bakshi, another popular sleuth created by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay.