Ok For Mirzapur, Not Ok For Venky Mama?Venkatesh and Rana came together for Rana Naidu, an action drama series that premiered on Netflix on the 9th of March. The series has opened to polar reviews on social media. But one common comment is that Venkatesh played a character that is way too raw and overtly aggressive for him.

There’s a comment that Rana Naidu has way too much adult content and cuss words. But what needs to be noted here is that the set of audience who are criticizing Rana Naidu now tend to lap up Mirzapur which also has similar adult-oriented presentation and excessive cuss words that are a part of a narrative.

The audience have no issue if the very same director – Karan Anshuman’s Mirzapur is loaded with adult content and related dialogues. But they find fault with Venkatesh doing something similar.

Then perhaps, the point to be noted here is the perspective of the audience. The logical explanation is that Venkatesh’s clean image is restricting the Telugu folk, the predominant target audience for the show, from watching it with an open mind. They are unable to process Venky in such a raw and out-there role.

Venky is a family hero here and perhaps the Telugu audience wasn’t expecting him to utter so many cuss words, which of course are a part of the narrative. Well, no one found fault with Rana doing as many adult scenes and using cuss words in the same show, That is because the audience are accustomed to watching him in such a role.

But the focal point changed when Venky is involved with an adult series like this. Same would’ve been the case had any Telugu senior star played the role. This is just a bit too far fetched and alienated for the Telugu folk.

Like for instance, Arjun Reddy had Vijay Deverakonda in the lead role and given that he wasn’t a too well-known face back then, there wasn’t too much noise against the content. Had a family hero like Nani done the film, he would’ve faced the heat.

Also, Netflix failed to prepare the audience for what is coming. The only breadcrumb was the G word in the trailer. The sudden outset of the adult content in the full series has come as a shocker. This could well further tarnish Netflix’s prospects in the Telugu states, while they’re already struggling to gain good subscriptions domestically.

Taking a family hero like Venkatesh from Telugu and doing such an adult show will certainly not help Netflix in any way. This is a miscalculation, we must say.