Monika Shergill, VP, content, Netflix India, says the streamer has moved comedy from a series of individual bets to a long-term programming pillar because of how many different audience needs the genre can serve.
“Comedy is deeply personal and subjective. What makes one person laugh may not work for another, so our job is to super-serve audiences with a wide range of voices, formats and sensibilities,” Shergill tells Variety.
Shergill points to the streamer’s five specials with Vir Das, including the International Emmy-winning “Landing,” alongside the returning “The Great Indian Kapil Show” and “Single Papa,” which was renewed for a second season, as evidence of that range.
One lesson from the slate so far, Shergill says, is that audiences want both familiarity and discovery at once. “One of the clearest things we’ve learned is that audiences want both comfort and surprise,” she says. She points to “The Great Indian Kapil Show” renewing itself season after season with the same cast, against the eccentric courtroom world of “Maamla Legal Hai,” as two different routes to the same result. “What connects them is emotional recognition,” she says.
Shergill pushes back on the notion that Indian comedy audiences are splintering into narrower segments. “Audiences aren’t dividing, they’re diversifying their own taste,” she says, noting that the same viewer might watch Kapil Sharma with family and Zakir Khan on their own, depending on mood and company. That fluidity, she says, shapes the range of the slate itself, from the dark comedy “Darlings” to the crime caper “Dhoom Dhaam” to the workplace setting of “Maamla Legal Hai” to “Super Subbu,” which she says wraps a social issue in comic packaging so it lands with viewers.
On why now, Shergill says the timing reflects several factors converging at once rather than a single trigger. “It isn’t one signal; it is the combination of several,” she says, pointing to Bam’s “Dhindora” returning for a second season, Suresh’s “Hoemonal” arriving as a new voice, and Raina’s relationship with Netflix evolving from an appearance on Kapil Sharma’s show to “India’s Got Latent” Season 2 and now an exclusive special in development.
“Comedy remains an underserved genre in entertainment, so that combination of continuity and newness is what makes this the moment to invest further,” Shergill says.
