This review is based on the initial three episodes of the new Netflix show titled Black Warrant, based on a book of the same name by journalist Sunetra Choudhary and former Tihar Jail superintendent Sunil Gupta. However, going by the detailing shown in these episodes, there are chances of the rating going even higher eventually. Confession in the beginning: I haven’t read the book, which has given me a fresh perspective that is mostly driven by the entertainment quotient of the show. If you’re not looking for the mismatch between the book and the show, then you’re mostly looking for the right tempo and pace. Seconds into the show and you meet the lead of the biographical drama, jailer Sunil Gupta, a docile-looking but gritty middleclass boy with empathy in eyes and a hesitant body language. Wait a minute, have I not seen this full of potential actor somewhere before?

Jails are a world of their own making and ‘a law unto themselves’. Time and again, we have been reminded that prisons not only house hardened criminals, but are hubs of crime too. We have often seen the murky life inside prisons through the eyes of the prisoners. But a jailer’s unflinching point of view, listing systemic lapses, is not an everyday insight. Trust filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane to not only tread a new path each time, but also come out trumps. After wowing us with his period series ‘Jubilee’, now in association with Applause Entertainment and co-creator Satyanshu Singh, he turns his attention to Tihar jail. It’s certainly not a happy place, neither for the inmates, nor for those who try to run it. Since the source material is the book ‘Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer’, written by Sunetra Choudhury and the former superintendent of Tihar Jail Sunil Gupta, for most parts the intense narrative rings true.

A Vikramaditya Motwane film (or series) will always have one standout moment that stays on with the audience long after curtain call. In his debut film Udaan, it is the final moment of brothers Rohan and Arjun triumphantly walking hand-in-hand to their long-deserved freedom. In Trapped, it is Shaurya’s almost gleeful taandav-like dance when he burns down his mattress in a bid to attract attention in the apartment he finds himself locked in. In Lootera, it is the painfully poignant penultimate scene of Varun hanging an artificial leaf in the blinding blizzard so that Paakhi has reason to live, for at least a day more. In Jubilee, among many memorable moments, it is the unbridled sense of joy, reminiscent of Awaara, where Jay and Niloufer lose their umbrella in the pouring rain, but discover each other in the process. Each of these scenes represents freedom — or the journey towards it — in many ways. Each moment, as is the norm in a Motwane directorial, is simple on the surface but is loaded with meat and meaning.

“People say prison is a trashcan, but it’s really a circus,” DSP Tomar (Rahul Bhat) tells his new jailers. Black Warrant suggests that hangings are the circus’ circus. The sentenced are celebrities of the prison world. The visiting hangmen are celebrities for the Tihar staff. Inmates become nervy; reporters start asking questions. Everyone’s on edge—all except ASP Dahiya (Anurag Thakur), grinning broadly as he massages banana pulp onto a noose. The best Hindi streaming shows of the past few years are carefully built from the ground up, the longer runtimes allowing for more complex narratives but also challenge creators to populate and make believable specific universes—stock markets, village councils, counterfeit operations. I didn’t know hanging ropes were once smoothened with mashed banana. It’s not a vital piece of information; you’d miss it altogether if you weren’t paying attention for those three seconds in the second episode. But it’s sort of detail that gives me confidence, tells me the makers have burrowed deep inside their setting.

Co-created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh, the Netflix series Black Warrant is adapted from Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury’s non-fiction. Set in the 1980s, it follows a young man who signs up to be a jailer in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, as it is the only job available, and finds himself in the process. With compelling performances and an engrossing narrative, the prison drama unfolds just like a page-turner you can’t put down. At the end of the seven episodes, Black Warrant will leave you wanting more. Zahan Kapoor plays the straitlaced Sunil Gupta, who moulds himself and his beliefs according to the job. His co-workers, played by Paramvir Cheema and Anurag Thakur, seem better suited for the position. His boss, Rajesh Tomar (Rahul Bhat), and family don’t think he can last long. But he proves them all wrong as he keeps at it, despite facing the wrath of his superiors every other episode. Sunil must prove himself over and over again. With Sunil’s growth, audiences learn the stories of the prisoners, from the most notorious murderers to the petty criminals. Some of these are taken from the famous inmates who were housed at Tihar, some awaiting execution.

‘Black Warrant’ is a seven-part series based on a book of the same name about an insider’s account of his time at what has been dubbed ‘the biggest prison in Asia’, Tihar Jail. The volume is co-authored by Sunil Kumar Gupta, who joined Tihar in the early 80s, and journalist Sunetra Chowdhary; the show, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, cherry picks some of the most sensational cases that unspooled during Gupta’s watch, as he grew from a wet-behind-the-ears rookie to an experienced jailer, without losing his humanity. Gupta, credited with starting Tihar’s first legal aid cell for poor, illiterate under-trials, is played by Zahan Kapoor. The actor, who debuted in Hansal Mehta’s 2022 terrorist drama ‘Faraz’, is given enough time here to grow into his role. Within a few minutes of the opening, his slight frame and smiling, soft ways — unlike his colleagues, he doesn’t cuss a mile a minute, nor does he use brute force on the inmates — are underlined more than a few times, and it’s quickly apparent why. His character, who doesn’t quite fit the job description — maintaining order in a rough-tough jail — is a familiar device used to impart chunks of information. And it is to Kapoor’s credit that he becomes more than just that device which is pressed into service through the series; he inhabits his character with conviction.

Jailers, convicts and undertrials populate Black Warrant, a seven-episode Netflix series created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh and produced under the banner of Applause Entertainment. Barring occasional detours beyond its prison setting, the show remains firmly focussed on an upright, unassuming jailer navigating a corrupt, insensitive system. It provides a sprawling overview of Delhi’s understaffed and overcrowded Tihar Jail of the 1980s from the perspective of a real-life prison superintendent. The insider’s take sets the series apart from average yarns about cops and crooks, crime and punishment. Black Warrant is no yarn. Rooted in reality, it portrays the intense struggles of a hero who is anything but a boilerplate man of action. He isn’t a cocky, hyper-masculine, strapping crusader out to flatten everything in his path.

In the 1920s, a young George Orwell was posted in Burma, as part of the Indian Imperial Police. In a famous essay titled A Hanging — written, in all likelihood, from lived experience — Orwell describes the morning of a prison execution. His unnamed narrator contrasts the minutiae of prison life with the moral shock of capital punishment. “It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man,” he writes. There is a touch of the young Orwell in Sunil (Zahan Kapoor), a rookie jailer finding his feet in Tihar, Asia’s largest and most dreaded prison. Set in the 80s, Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh’s series is based on the non-fiction book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer. The real Sunil Gupta, who co-authored the book with journalist Sunetra Choudhury, was a former superintendent of Tihar, while doubling as its press relations officer and legal adviser. In his decades at the jail, Gupta oversaw the execution of several high-profile criminals, including Delhi child murderers Billa-Ranga and Kashmiri separatist Maqbool Bhat. He spoke candidly to Choudhury about his experiences. Once you put a face to the stat, how long can you look away?

For all intents and purposes, Sunil Kumar Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) is not a good fit for Tihar jail. He has a slim build and his oversized uniform hangs loosely on him. He’s grown a moustache to mask his lack of depth in an institution fuelled by testosterone; Gupta is too stuck in his ‘decent’ ways to even inadvertently cuss. He refers to his mother as ‘Mumma’ – a seemingly ordinary-but-revealing detail about his dynamic with her and how he’s been raised. He’s called ‘Baby’ by family members and neighbours – a detail almost trying too hard to sell his obvious displacement in Tihar.