General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Bestseller (2022 TV series)

Bestseller is a Hindi-language psychological suspense thriller streaming television series that premiered on Amazon Prime Video in February 2022. Directed by Mukul Abhyankar and loosely adapted from Ravi Subramanian's novel The Bestseller She Wrote, it follows a novelist with writer's block who steals a fan's life story for his next book, setting off a chain of deception and death.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Platform / language	Amazon Prime Video; Hindi¹
Release date	18 February 2022 per Gadgets 360 and FMDb; 17 February 2022 per Digit and Prime Video's own listing¹^•³^•⁴
Format	8 episodes, roughly 30 to 37 minutes each²^•⁵
Source	Loosely adapted from Ravi Subramanian's novel The Bestseller She Wrote²
Director / writers	Mukul Abhyankar; screenplay by Anvita Dutt and Althea Kaushal¹^•⁶
Lead cast	Shruti Haasan, Mithun Chakraborty, Gauahar Khan, Arjan Bajwa, Satyajeet Dubey, Sonalee Kulkarni¹
Production	Alchemy Production; producers Siddharth P Malhotra and Sapna Malhotra¹
Reception	Times of India critic rating 2.5/5; IMDb 6.1/10; Gadgets 360 3.3 stars⁷^•⁴

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The series centers on Tahir Wazir (Arjan Bajwa), a novelist suffering from writer's block a decade after his bestselling debut. He meets Meetu Mathur (Shruti Haasan), a young fan and budding writer from a small town who wants him as her mentor. Desperate to meet his publisher's expectations for his second novel, Tahir decides to use Meetu's story for his own book, and the two grow close.²^•³

Meanwhile Tahir's wife Mayanka (Gauahar Khan), the owner of an advertising company, becomes perturbed by his dishonesty and his closeness to Meetu, and she leans toward Parth (Satyajeet Dubey), an intern at her workplace. A mysterious attack on Meetu draws in the police, and a social media troll begins attacking Tahir and Meetu; as the attacks escalate and people die, a seasoned officer investigates. The show frames its mystery around the idea that there is no absolute truth to any story.⁶^•³^•⁷

Cast and characters

The principal roles, as listed by FMDb, are:⁸

Shruti Haasan as Meetu Mathur
Mithun Chakraborty as Lokesh Pramanik, a Criminal Investigation Department officer⁶
Arjan Bajwa as Tahir Wazir
Gauahar Khan as Mayanka Kapoor
Sonalee Kulkarni as Urmila Ranade, a cyber-crime expert⁶
Satyajeet Dubey as Parth Acharya
Suchitra Pillai as Sukanya

Mithun Chakraborty makes his streaming debut with the series.¹ Shruti Haasan described it as her first lead OTT series and called it serendipitous that Chakraborty was part of both her acting debut and this show.⁹

Production and release

The series was written by Anvita Dutt and Althea Kaushal and directed by Mukul Abhyankar, with cinematography by Sameer Arya and production design by N Madhusudan.¹^•⁶^•⁸ Producer Siddharth P. Malhotra said in a statement that his team had worked to transform the story into a series that he believed would redefine the psychological thriller genre.¹

The British Board of Film Classification classified the episodes for VOD/streaming on 16 February 2022 through Amazon Media EU S.à r.l., with content advice covering strong language, violence, domestic abuse, disturbing images, and, in episode 2, brief sexual violence.¹⁰ Apple TV's listing credits Amazon Studios as the studio and notes the series is rated 14 with region of origin India.⁵

Reception

Critical response was largely negative. The Times of India gave the season 2.5 out of 5, calling the show a moral lecture and saying the adaptation arrived without commitment to doing justice to Ravi Subramanian's original thriller.⁷ Scroll.in found it low on suspense despite its twists, stretching a threadbare yarn to eight episodes, though it singled out Gauahar Khan and Satyajeet Dubey as the most memorable performers and called Chakraborty the main source of entertainment.⁶ The Indian Express called it one of the worst Amazon originals Indian streaming had produced, and Hindustan Times described it as a shoddily made series on a promising story.¹¹^•¹² India Today's review called it a bore and noted that any mystery ends by the fourth episode of the eight-part series.¹³ A more favorable take came from iGlobal News, which called it a gripping and bingeworthy drama with imaginative casting.² Aggregated user and platform ratings sit in the middle: IMDb lists 6.1/10 and Gadgets 360 3.3 stars.⁴^•¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026