General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Eken Babu

Eken Babu (একেন বাবু) is a Bengali-language detective comedy web series streaming on the platform Hoichoi since 2018, adapted from the fictional detective Eken Babu created by the Bengali writer Sujan Dasgupta. The series follows Ekendra Sen, called Eken Babu, a middle-aged, food-loving Bengali detective who solves cases with wit and humor, aided by his friends Bapi and Pramatha.¹ It has run for nine seasons and spawned a series of theatrical films, and in November 2025 a Hindi-dubbed version brought the character to television on Sony SAB.²

Key fact	Detail
Original run	First aired March 3, 2018 on Hoichoi; nine seasons through Season 9 (2026)³
Source	Detective character created by Sujan Dasgupta; first story, "Manhattaner Moonstone", published in the magazine Anandamela in 1991⁴
Lead actor	Anirban Chakrabarti as Ekendra Sen (Eken Babu)⁵
Format	Comedy-mystery episodes averaging about 22 minutes; produced by SVF Entertainment for Hoichoi³
Films	The Eken (2022), The Eken: Ruddhaswas Rajasthan (2023), The Eken: Benaras e Bibhishika (2025), The Eken: Kerala-e Kurukshetra (2026)⁴^•⁶
Television debut	Hindi-dubbed version premiered on Sony SAB on November 24, 2025, after eight web seasons and three films²
IMDb rating	7.9/10 from about 1,100 user votes⁷

Spoilers

Seasons

The series has followed a roughly annual release pattern, with each season sending Eken, Bapi, and Pramatha to a new location built around a fresh mystery.³

Season 1 (March 2018, 10 episodes): Eken arrives at an apartment in Bangalore, where the residents find one of their number, Kirit Patel, dead, and the season follows his investigation of the death.¹¹
Season 2 (November 2018, 6 episodes), directed by Anupam Hari.³^•¹²
Season 3, Eken Babu O Dhaka Rahashya (November 2019, 5 episodes): set in Bangladesh, where Eken attends a literary meet in Dhaka and investigates a death that looks like a heart attack; directed by Abhijit Chowdhury.⁵^•¹³
Season 4 (October 2020, 6 episodes) and Season 5 (October 2021, 6 episodes), with Season 5 built around a mystery in Tungkulung, a Nepali village.³^•¹⁴
Season 6 (December 2022, 6 episodes), set in the lanes of Kolkata.³^•¹⁵
Season 7, Tungkulung e Eken (December 2023, 7 episodes), set in the jungles of Tungkulung.³^•⁹
Season 8, Puro Puri Eken (January 2025, 7 episodes): Eken's vacation in Puri turns deadly when a Kathakali artist is killed.³^•¹⁶
Season 9, Purulia-e Pakrao (April 2026, 7 episodes), directed by Joydeep Mukherjee: a Poush Porob getaway to Purulia brings a vegetarian ashram, a stolen emerald, and a murder.¹⁷^•¹⁸

Directing duties have been shared among Anirban Mallik, Anupam Hari, Abhijit Chowdhury, Surajit Chatterjee, and Joydeep Mukherjee, with Mukherjee taking over much of the run from 2020 onward.¹⁰ The supporting cast has changed once at its core: Shoumo Banerjee played Bapi in the early seasons, and Suhotra Mukhopadhyay took over the role from Season 6, with Somak Ghosh as Pramatha.¹⁹

The character

Eken Babu is written against the grain of the conventional sleuth. He loves food and riddles, chats constantly, makes poor jokes, and unknowingly irritates the people around him, yet underneath this exterior he has a sharp intellect and solves murders with what looks like effortless ease.¹^•⁸ Anirban Chakrabarti, who has played him since the first season, described the character as having layers: the outer layer is childlike and food-loving, while the inner self is highly capable, and this combination makes Eken "the boy next door" rather than the permanently serious figure of most detective fiction.⁸

The first season holds back his background. According to Chakrabarti, viewers learn by the end of Season 1 that Eken is a detective from the police force, a reveal intended as a shock; his simple manner and foolish remarks are an act, so that nobody can tell what his detective mind is really thinking.⁵ A later interview added that the character was originally based in the United States and was adapted to Indian settings when the series began.⁹

Origin in print

The screen Eken descends from a literary character. Sujan Dasgupta created the detective, and the first story in the series, "Manhattaner Moonstone", appeared in the Bengali children's magazine Anandamela in 1991.⁴ In 2018 the Kolkata-based production company SVF adapted the stories for the screen as a web series on Hoichoi, its Bengali-language streaming platform, and further seasons followed on the strength of the show's popularity.⁴ Padmanabha Dasgupta has written the scripts and dialogues across much of the run.¹⁰

Feature films

The franchise moved to theaters after the fifth season. The first film, The Eken, released around Poila Boishakh (the Bengali new year) in 2022, was not favored by critics but succeeded commercially; it is set in the hills of Darjeeling.⁴^•²⁰ The second, The Eken: Ruddhaswas Rajasthan, directed by Joydeep Mukherjee, released on Poila Boishakh, April 14, 2023, and moves the action to Rajasthan.⁴ A third film, The Eken: Benaras e Bibhishika (2025), follows Eken on a Holi getaway to Benaras that turns into a race to protect the city's Masaan Holi festival from a conspiracy.⁶ A fourth, The Eken: Kerala-e Kurukshetra, directed by Mukherjee and picking up from Eken's kidnapping at the end of Purulia-e Pakrao, takes the detective to Kerala in pursuit of a missing nuclear scientist.²¹

Hindi television debut

In November 2025, after eight web seasons and three theatrical films, the series made its television debut on the Hindi channel Sony SAB as a dubbed release. The channel's announcement described Ekenra Sen as a quirky, moody, food-loving detective whose simple ways and peculiar habits leave both criminals and companions baffled.² The dubbed premiere aired on November 24, 2025.²²

Reception

The series holds a 7.9/10 rating on IMDb from about 1,100 votes, with episode-level scores that run highest in the early seasons (Season 1 episodes between 7.6 and 8.5) and dip in Seasons 6 and 7 (mostly between 6.4 and 7.6) before recovering in Seasons 8 and 9.⁷ Reviewers have consistently credited the chemistry of the Eken-Bapi-Pramatha trio and Chakrabarti's performance, including Eken's habit of mangling proverbs, while often judging the underlying mysteries as more conventional fare; a review of The Eken noted that the character's antics receive more careful writing than the central puzzle.²⁰^•²¹ Chakrabarti has said that parents told him their children watch no Bengali content except Eken, and that the audience's response is what carried the franchise from an uncertain first season to nine seasons and a film series.²³^•⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Indian and South Asian web series › Premiered 2003 to 2020

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

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