Creator-producer Nikhil Advani follows up the thoughtful and meditative historical drama Freedom at Midnight with The Revolutionaries, another longform period series about Indian history. This time, the focus is on some of India’s lesser-known freedom fighters who took up arms against the British in the early 1910s, before the more famous Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad, and Udham Singh.Loosely based on Sanjeev Sanyal’s 2023 book Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom, the eight-episode Amazon Prime Video series is also directed by Advani.The premise has immense potential: the story of India’s armed anti-colonial revolutionaries offers plenty of material for a gripping action drama, and The Revolutionaries is lavishly mounted, packed with detail and clearly made with commercial thrills in mind.Rash Behari Bose (Bhuvan Bam), Sachindranath Sanyal (Rohit Saraf), Bagha Jatin (Gurfateh Pirzada).It could have had some of the rigour of The Battle of Algiers in its examination of armed anti-colonial resistance and subsequent torture and repression; Or the rage and bite of Rang De Basanti, which draws parallels between India’s violent revolutionaries and contemporary resistance against an oppressive state.Instead, The Revolutionaries takes a pulpier approach, turning the freedom struggle into a mainstream spectacle. This could have worked too. Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained, along with Rajamouli’s RRR, demonstrate how historical material can be rewritten into wildly entertaining genre cinema.The problem is that Advani never fully commits to any of these possibilities.'System' Review: A Promising Courtroom Drama Undone by Generic TwistsAn Unfocused SeriesThe series follows Rash Behari Bose (Bhuvan Bam), the master of disguises and the “most wanted” key strategist of the revolutionary movement against the British; Sachindranath Sanyal (Rohit Saraf), a wide-eyed, aspiring revolutionary, eager to be more directly involved than his family considers safe; Bagha Jatin (Gurfateh Pirzada), who joins the show later as the more experienced and formidable fighter; and Pratibha Lahiri (Pratibha Ranta), a young woman being pushed towards an arranged marriage, yet looking fore more and interested in revolutionary ideas.The story focuses on the build-up to the Ghadar Movement and mutiny of 1915 during the First World War, with Bose and company being hunted by the British colonial supervillain General Reginald Dyer (Jason Shah), who was subsequently responsible for the brutal 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.The Revolutionaries wants to be a hefty spy thriller, with its big action set pieces, several moments of suspense, and an ever-present cat-and-mouse dynamic between the revolutionaries and the British colonial administration.At the same time, it also wants to be a sprawling historical drama a la Bhansali, stuffing in several subplots and segueing into tangential characters and locations across India and even briefly San Francisco.The result is an overstuffed mess with too much material to juggle and not enough substance or a solid throughline to sustain eight long episodes.The biggest issue is that the show doesn’t trust its own narrative. Just when the central story begins to gather momentum, it repeatedly takes distracting detours.How 'Dhurandhar 2' Gaslights its Own ProtagonistThe first few episodes especially struggle with clunky expositions: the plot is propelled by an attempt to assassinate Viceroy Lord Hardinge. Meanwhile, Bose is balancing a double life as a regular chemistry professor and closet revolutionary.This is instantly intriguing, but the show reveals barrages of information through awkward dialogue rather than letting the characters and world speak for themselves.As a result, it is difficult to invest in the lives of the revolutionaries themselves, for they are more symbols than people. No particularly focused personal narrative anchors the sprawling story, especially apparent in the tepid love story between Pratibha and Sachindranath.This romance is meant to make us feel more connected to the characters and their emotions, as well as the personal cost they incur in dedicating themselves to a revolution whose outcome they know they will not personally get to experience.But these Bollywood-soaked, saccharine sequiturs repeatedly take us away from the drive of the plot, which is ultimately the push and pull between the colonialists and the revolutionaries. They function more as a distraction.Pratibha Ranta who plays Pratibha Lahiri on the show.‘Matka King’ Review: A Flawed but Compelling Rise of a Gambling DonThe Revolutionaries Get LostThe performances do little to compensate for the script’s weak characterisation. The actors are uniformly sincere in their attempts, but struggle to make lasting impressions.Bam plays Bose with conviction but a smugness that can feel stiff. Saraf never quite lands as the wide-eyed aspiring rebel, with the character coming across as too cute and sanitised despite his impressive physical transformation. Pirzada is a strong presence as Bagha Jatin; his is perhaps the most compelling performance among the leads. Ranta has good potential as Pratibha, but her character remains frustratingly peripheral. Although she feels believably invested in the revolution, the writing uses gimmicky references (like to the detective Sherlock Holmes) and contrived commentary on women’s restricted agency during that time.The most compelling character, ironically, is General Dyer.He is given glimpses of a childhood marked by bullying over his stutter, and the show actually allows us to feel his ache and obsession as he feverishly chases after the revolutionaries. Shah leans into the character and the campy potential of the series.But what does it say about The Revolutionaries that the most compelling character in the show with that title is Dyer?'Freedom at Midnight' Shows Why India Is Still Afraid Of Its Own HistoryScreengrab from the show.The World Never Comes AliveEven the filmmaking struggles to immerse us in its world. The visuals often look artificial, reducing Dehradun, Benaras, Calcutta, Chandernagore, and Lahore into generic, flat studio aesthetics rather than making these places feel as distinct as they are.The background score only draws further attention to the show’s problems. It constantly thumps and swells to manufacture suspense, even when the story itself has not created enough tension for us to feel it.By the time all the threads somewhat coalesce in the climax, it’s too late.Ultimately, The Revolutionaries should probably have been contained to a shorter format. The lengthy story arc is stretched thin, genuine moments of tension aren't given enough room to land, and the show lacks a strong central thesis and narrative spine. And there’s not enough of an unabashed commitment to the excesses of a fun, juicy revisionist-history thriller.A more focused, sharpened approach, less reliant on the smoke and mirrors of style and excess, could have worked. Unfortunately, The Revolutionaries didn’t take that road.(Kaashif Hajee is a writer and film critic from Mumbai, currently based in London. He is the Assistant Culture Editor of The Polis Project. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)'Dhadak 2' Isn't Just a Love Story—It's a Caste Reckoning