OTT gangster shows are like a meal that comes with a side of gut-wrenching violence, a lot of creative cussing, and women who mostly exist to watch the men go absolutely bonkers. Mirzapur The Film was announced soon after the third season aired, expanding a universe that’s already filled to the brim with feuds and machismo. Here’s a run-through of the tropes that OTT gangster series can’t get enough of.
The Cussing Overload
How do you know you’re in an OTT gangster show? The script has more swear words than actual dialogue. Every second line is a profanity, as if the characters have a swear quota to hit. It makes you wonder if the writers are secretly trying to set a world record for swear words. It’s as if they thought, “Why use 10 words to describe someone’s feelings when one really nasty expletive will do?”
Women As Props Or Plot Points
If you’re a woman in an OTT gangster series, buckle up because your character arc is either “get kidnapped, get avenged, or get sacrificed” for someone else's emotional growth. The women on these shows mostly exist to make the male characters feel even more bloodthirsty. They are either someone’s daughter, wife, or girlfriend waiting to be avenged or a Lady Macbeth type who’s been handed a gun for shock value.
The Macho Men Who Just Can’t Calm Down
Every male character is built like they just walked out of a testosterone lab. They’re flexing, swaggering, and announcing their dominance, whether it’s Kaleen Bhaiya in Mirzapur growling his threats or Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Ganesh Gaitonde in Sacred Games acting like the most tortured alpha. Their existential crises would be almost touching if they didn’t involve AK-47s and enough chest-puffing to power a bodybuilder convention.
Vengeful Mobs And Family Feuds
Forget about therapy. Family drama in OTT gangster shows is resolved by an old-fashioned vendetta. In Mirzapur, the Tyagi and Tripathi families are constantly in a generational feud that’s so complex, it practically requires a family tree diagram. Meanwhile, Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo takes the idea of a fierce family matriarch to a new level, as the lead is both the boss of a drug empire and a literal grandmother, wielding guns and grudges with equal fervour.
Plotlines Thicker Than the Ganga
Trying to follow a storyline in these shows can feel like reading a family drama set in a jungle gym. Between Sacred Games’ time jumps and Maharani’s political twists, the plots weave and bob with subplots about revenge, drug empires, and questionable business deals. It’s as if the writers said, “What if we created a crime show, but made it as hard as possible to figure out who’s mad at whom?”
Existential Crises
Every male character here seems to have a philosophical crisis that could be solved with meditation, but instead, they go with murder. Gaitonde in Sacred Games is practically a walking existential spiral, alternating between mystical rants and violent outbursts. And in Mirzapur, Kaleen Bhaiya waxes poetic about power and death akin to Hamlet with a loaded revolver. These guys are so busy contemplating their place in the universe, they don’t seem to notice the trail of bodies piling up.
Female ‘Empowerment’
The Wasseypur-inspired genre attempts a twisted form of “female empowerment” by handing the women weapons, as if that somehow balances the scales. In Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo, the mother-in-law is a drug lord who can shoot, stab, and scheme with the best of them. But it’s hardly nuanced—her empowerment seems directly proportional to the number of weapons she wields. They aren’t empowering women so much as turning them into carbon copies of their male counterparts.
Small Town Means Savagery
These shows are practically an ad campaign for “why not to visit small-town India.” Mirzapur has taken Uttar Pradesh’s small towns and turned them into dens of lawlessness where everyone’s settling disputes with fists. In Guns And Gulaabs, the innocent countryside vibe is laced with dark, violent undertones that make you wonder if small-town folks here spend more time in gunfights than farming. It’s a wild exaggeration that gives “rural India” a dangerously intense image.
OTT gangster dramas are addictive and ridiculous in equal measure. With Mirzapur The Film on the horizon, we can be sure of one thing: the profanity, testosterone, and guns are far from running out.
