General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Mandaar

Mandaar (মন্দার) is a 2021 Bengali-language crime thriller web series that adapts William Shakespeare's Macbeth, set in a fictional coastal fishing village in Bengal and directed by actor Anirban Bhattacharya in his debut as a director.¹^•² It premiered on 19 November 2021 on the Bengali streaming platform Hoichoi as the first title in the platform's new World Classics category, and consists of one season of five episodes rated 18+.¹^•³^•²

Key fact	Detail
Premise	A gritty adaptation of Macbeth set in a coastal Bengal fishing village, in which Mandaar rises to power through blood and betrayal, urged on by his ambitious partner Laili²
Premiere	19 November 2021, all five episodes released on Hoichoi; first series in the World Classics category¹^•³
Director	Anirban Bhattacharya, his directorial debut; co-written with Pratik Dutta¹^•⁴
Lead cast	Debasish Mondal as Mandaar (Macbeth), Sohini Sarkar as Laili (Lady Macbeth), Debesh Roy Chowdhury as Dablu Bhai (Duncan), Sankar Debnath as Bonka (Banquo)⁵
Setting	The fictional village of Geilpur, in the coastal area of East Midnapore district, West Bengal⁶
Production	SVF Entertainment; shot in about two weeks on the shores of Mandarmani and Tajpur¹
Reception	IMDb weighted rating of 7.4/10 from about 1,900 users⁷

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The series transposes Macbeth to Geilpur, a seaside village where the fishermen are controlled by Dablu Bhai (Debesh Roy Chowdhury), the owner of extensive fisheries and the local counterpart of King Duncan.⁸ Mandaar (Debasish Mondal) and Bonka (Sankar Debnath), the equivalents of Macbeth and Banquo, are his most trusted henchmen, used to guard the fisheries and keep the workers in line.⁸ Laili (Sohini Sarkar) is Bhattacharya's version of Lady Macbeth, described by the platform as Mandaar's ambitious and manipulative partner who fuels his darkest instincts.⁸^•² Bhattacharya himself plays police officer Muqaddar Mukherjee.¹

The supernatural figures of Shakespeare's play become Majnu Buri, an old woman who hints at Mandaar's fate when he returns from crushing dissent for Dablu Bhai, and Pedo, the madwoman's child.²^•⁸ Unlike the witches of the play, Majnu Buri's words do not tempt Mandaar into ambition; they convey a general foreboding, and Mandaar's motivations for murder are found primarily in Laili, in her illicit relationship with Dablu Bhai, and in his newfound potency.⁸

The five episodes carry titles taken from Macbeth: "Hell Is Murky" (40 minutes), "Blood Will Have Blood" (39 minutes), "The Way To Dusty Death" (48 minutes), "Life's But A Walking Shadow" (44 minutes), and "Fair Is Foul, And Foul Is Fair" (52 minutes).² The season follows Mandaar's murder of his mentor and seizure of power, his trade of leverage to stay in power, further killings driven by Majnu Buri's prophecy, and the spiral of guilt and madness that ends the struggle for Geilpur.²

Adaptation choices

The witches. Bhattacharya's witches are marginal outcasts living at the edges of the village, mostly defined by omission and silence until near the climactic episode. The adaptation departs from both the Shakespearean text and the tradition of Macbeth adaptations in two ways: one of the witches murders Mandaar, and his final defeat comes not through a Macduff figure but through one of the "unnatural hags." Scholars Subarna Mondal and Anindya Sen describe these departures as making Mandaar an outlier in the history of Macbeth adaptations.⁸

Setting and imagery. The series is the only adaptation that foregrounds Act I Scene iii of Macbeth by making the sea its setting and a man dealing with the sea its protagonist. The fisheries and their enclosures (the "bheri") breed the corruption, greed, and murder of the plot, and the image of a dead fish secured on a pole recurs through the series, recalling the final scene of the play in which Macbeth's head is carried onstage fixed on a pole.⁸ The director has said the sea suggested the proverbial "big fish eating small fish" and the image of a fish caught at the end of a spear.⁹

Suspense structure. Rather than the conventions of gangster films, the thriller element is built around a lore concerning a monster called the "Rakhkhas," which transforms the familiar Shakespearean plot for an audience for whom the story of Macbeth is overfamiliar from numerous Bengali stage adaptations.⁶

Production

Bhattacharya had lived with the idea of adapting Macbeth since 2012, originally conceiving it as a theater piece called "Mogoje Macbeth" about an ordinary office-goer obsessed with the play's power struggle. The project took shape after he entered cinema and Hoichoi emerged as an OTT platform; it became, in his words, a by-product of the pandemic, developed from May 2020 with co-writer Pratik Dutta and inputs from Rudrarup Mukhopadhyay, a student of English literature.⁹

The dialogue was converted bit by bit into the dialect of the East Midnapore coast, then trimmed to remain accessible to general audiences while retaining the dialect's nuances.⁹ Lead actor Debasish Mondal, a long-time theater actor, said the tight schedule forced single-shot scenes and left time only to research the living, eating, and speech of the Purba Medinipur fishermen, whose dialect he learned by mingling with them during shooting.¹ Behind the camera, the team comprised Soumik Haldar handling cinematography, Sanglap Bhowmik editing, Subrata Barik on production design, Adeep Singh Manki and Anindit Roy designing the sound, and Subhadeep Guha writing the music.⁹

Reception and significance

The series received a weighted IMDb rating of 7.4/10, with individual episodes rated between 8.1 and 8.7 by users.⁷ An OTTplay review rated it 3.5 out of 5, describing it as an experience that stays with the viewer and praising Bhattacharya's use of surroundings and characters.¹⁰ A review in Shakespeare Bulletin judged that the series rewards multiple viewings for its bold reconceptualization of the sexual politics of Macbeth, revisiting the theme of transgression and retribution at the level of the body and bodily appetite, while noting its reliance on stereotypes about old, destitute women and disabled people.¹¹ A later article in Shakespeare argued that the series fails in the character development of Laili, rendering her a sexual object whose power play is fixated around childbearing, which the author reads as undermining Lady Macbeth's attempt at self-dependence.¹²

One scholarly account describes Mandaar, created by Bhattacharya and Pratik Dutta, as the first web series in India to adapt Shakespeare.¹³ At a Hoichoi awards event, Bhattacharya was selected as best director (India) for the series.¹⁴

Availability

The series streams on Hoichoi and the Hoichoi Amazon Channel, and free with ads on Amazon MX Player; a Hindi-dubbed version has been available on Amazon Prime Video.¹⁵^•⁴ Hoichoi lists Mandaar among its most loved series available worldwide, with English subtitles and Hindi dubs of its originals.¹⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › South and Southeast Asian serials › South Asian web serials › Premiered 2013 to 2024

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

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