Maisha Islam Monamee

At a time when OTT platforms are overflowing with gritty thrillers and intense dramas, Netflix’s “The Royals” offers a much-needed escape into a world of luxury, romance, and family dynamics. At its heart, the series is a maximalist rom-com built on the most classic of tropes — opposites attract, rich boy meets self-made girl, palace intrigue meets pitch decks — dressed in some of our favourite buzzwords: feminist, queer-friendly, and unapologetically fashionable. It is refreshing to see a desi series embrace froth and flamboyance without constantly apologising for it. Then again, being aware of one’s aesthetic does not excuse narrative shortcuts. While "The Royals" delivers big on styling and spectacle, its storytelling often trips on its own heels.

Mothers on screen are often reduced to clichés — the sacrificial, saintly figure or the melodramatic martyr. Then again, Bollywood notably holds a growing archive of stories where mothers are full-bodied characters: flawed, funny, brave, and deeply human. These women love fiercely, fight quietly, and exist beyond the frame of just being someone’s parent. From fighting governments to challenging their children, they show that real motherhood is messy, resilient, and worth watching not just for sentiment, but for substance.

Ten years ago, a film about bowel movements, a road trip, and a Bengali father’s hypochondria quietly slipped into theatres. Then, like that one relative who would not stop talking about their digestion at family dinners, it stayed in our collective memory far longer than expected. Perhaps more than a film, "Piku" became a prolonged sigh shared across generations, smelling faintly of home and unresolved emotional constipation.

Rabindranath Tagore’s works continue to amaze literary enthusiasts even today and the Nobel laureate has been a major source of inspiration for several filmmakers, who have developed their own unique touch by traversing his works. On his birth anniversary, we look back at four such adaptations that make Tagore’s works truly immortal.

It may safely be said that few characters in contemporary television have managed to disturb and captivate audiences in equal measure, the way Joe Goldberg has. Across five seasons of Netflix’s psychological thriller "You", Joe – played with eerie precision by Penn Badgley – has stalked, manipulated, and murdered his way through several dream cities. From the literary enclaves of New York to the sunlit superficiality of Los Angeles, and from suburban chaos to the gothic eeriness of London, his journey has been as much about place as it has been about pathology. In the final season, the show returns to its original setting, New York City, and in doing so, reclaims the sharpness and thematic coherence that initially made it a breakout success.

There are few things as consistent as our unstable Wi-Fi, existential dread, and a go-to playlist of Korean dramas to cushion reality’s blows—especially for Gen Z, myself included. To love K-dramas is to willingly suspend disbelief, bask in a world where minor inconveniences spiral into grand epiphanies, and where misunderstandings are solved with monologues. The question is not why we watch K-dramas, but why, in a country that has its fair share of daily drama, we still crave more — and from 5,000 kilometres away, no less.

A. F. M. Shahen Shah, a Bangladeshi researcher based in Turkey, has developed drone-based technology that could significantly improve emergency communication during natural disasters. His work, which has gained notable coverage in Turkish media, addresses the critical problem of the collapse of communication networks following disasters such as earthquakes and floods.

Pakistani dramas, once a peripheral cultural product in this region, have seemingly surged in popularity among Gen Z viewers in Bangladesh. Not in a nostalgically indulgent way, but with the kind of fervent devotion that leads to 1-billion-view YouTube milestones, fan edits on Instagram, and TikTok videos that reimagine tearful climaxes as memes. The real question is no longer whether this trend is genuine, it is, but rather why now?