Film and Television Adaptations of Byomkesh Bakshi

Abstract

Literature has always been a great source for films with countless literary characters making their way to the silver-screen. Depending on the vision of the directors, these characters often undergo massive transformation and hence appear very different from what we read in the books. In India, Sharadindu Bandhopadhyay’s literary creation Byomkesh Bakshi has been one of the most adapted characters. The first Byomkesh Bakshi to grace the Bengali screen was Uttam Kumar picked by Satyajit Ray to play the detective in Chiriakhana (1967). Rituparno Ghosh’s Satyanweshi (2013), an adaptation not of Satyanweshi but of another novel Chorabali (Quicksand) also failed for different reasons. The problem with Anjan Dutta’s adaptation of Byomkesh is that it fails to offer anything new.