General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Modern Love Hyderabad

Modern Love Hyderabad is a 2022 Telugu-language romantic anthology streaming series adapted from the American series Modern Love, which itself draws on the weekly The New York Times column of the same name. All six episodes premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 8 July 2022, each telling a standalone story of love, growth, resilience, and acceptance set in Hyderabad.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Telugu-language anthology, six standalone episodes, comedy-drama-romance¹
Release	8 July 2022, Amazon Prime Video, all episodes at once²
Showrunner	Nagesh Kukunoor, who co-wrote all six episodes and directed three²
Other directors	Venkatesh Maha, Uday Gurrala, and Devika Bahudhanam, one episode each³
Lead cast	Revathy, Nithya Menen, Aadhi Pinisetty, Ritu Varma, Suhasini Maniratnam, and others⁴
Episode length	31 to 42 minutes, averaging 39 minutes⁵
Reception	83% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 6 reviews; 6.1/10 on IMDb from about 452 votes⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Episodes

The six episodes, all released on 8 July 2022:⁵^•³

My Unlikely Pandemic Dream Partner (42 min), directed by Kukunoor, starring Revathy and Nithya Menen. After knee surgery, Noori calls her estranged mother to help her recover, and the two rebuild their relationship.⁵
Fuzzy, Purple and Full of Thorns... (41 min), directed by Kukunoor, starring Aadhi Pinisetty and Ritu Varma. Finding another woman's slippers in her boyfriend's closet sends 2D animator Renu on a whimsical journey questioning her views on dating and love.⁵
Why Did She Leave Me There...? (39 min), directed by Kukunoor, starring Suhasini Maniratnam and Naresh Agastya. Rohan, a hustler raised in difficult circumstances, revisits the orphanage he grew up in and confronts repressed emotions.⁵
What Clown Wrote This Script! (41 min), directed by Uday Gurrala, starring Abijeet Duddala and Malavika Nair. A nervous creative producer falls for the young standup comic helping him write a sitcom.⁵
About That Rustle in the Bushes (38 min), directed by Devika Bahudhanam, starring Ulka Gupta and Naresh. An overprotective father spies on his daughter's dates as she looks for a partner.⁵
Finding Your Penguin (31 min), directed by Venkatesh Maha, starring Komalee Prasad. A young woman finds her experiences of modern courtship not far from the mating rituals of the animal kingdom.⁵

Origins within the Modern Love franchise

Amazon Prime Video India announced in February 2022 that it would produce three Indian-language versions of Modern Love: Modern Love Mumbai in Hindi, Modern Love Chennai in Tamil, and Modern Love Hyderabad in Telugu, each adapting stories from the New York Times column to its own city.⁸ The American original, developed by John Carney, ran for two seasons in 2019 and 2021 with a cast including Anne Hathaway, Dev Patel, and Tina Fey.⁸

The Hyderabad chapter was the second Indian version to appear, arriving nearly two months after the Mumbai chapter; the Chennai chapter followed later.⁹ Aparna Purohit, then head of India originals at Amazon Prime Video, described the adaptations as stories of love rooted in Indian soil, with Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad serving as canvases.⁸

Showrunner and adaptation process

Nagesh Kukunoor, the Hyderabad-born filmmaker known for Hyderabad Blues (1998), served as showrunner, co-wrote all six episodes with Bahaish Kapoor and Shashi Sudigala, and directed three of them.²^•¹⁰ He initially turned the offer down. He had avoided romance throughout his career, calling it a genre that keeps getting rehashed, and accepted only after producer Elahe Hiptoola insisted he watch the American series; the first episode he saw, "When the Doorman is your Main Man", sold him on the project.¹¹

Adapting the material required deciding whether American stories would work for Telugu viewers. Kukunoor described the selection as a democratic process with a large team reading the column's essays, and said that once a story's crux was taken, the adaptation was more about physical details than emotional content.¹⁰ Colleagues vetoed article choices that seemed unlikely to land with the Telugu audience, and Kukunoor said he backed off when they did.¹¹ He deliberately sought different kinds of love beyond conventional couples, including a mother and daughter and a grandmother and grandson, and said he almost declined the project for that reason.¹⁰

His three episodes were staged to give three different visual palettes of the city: one in the slums, one in urban modern Hyderabad, and one in the old city around the Charminar.¹⁰

Cast and production

The ensemble drew on established Telugu cinema names: Revathy, Nithya Menen, Aadhi Pinisetty, Ritu Varma, Suhasini Maniratnam, Naresh, Malavika Nair, Abijeet Duddala, Naresh Agastya, Komalee Prasad, and Ulka Gupta.⁴ Elahe Hiptoola produced, with cinematography by Sangram Giri, Aditya Javvadi, Saiprakash, and Ummadisingu, and music by Tapas Relia and Smaran Sai; the production company was SIC Productions.⁴ The Indian Express review credited the theme song to M. M. Keeravani (MM Kreem).¹² For Kukunoor, working in Telugu was a step outside his usual Hindi-language work; he said afterward that his confidence in working in his mother tongue had grown tenfold.⁹

Reception

Critical response was mixed to positive. On Rotten Tomatoes, season 1 holds an 83% Tomatometer from six reviews.⁶ The Times of India gave it 3.5 out of 5, recommending the series for its lucid storytelling, performances, and celebration of Hyderabad.⁶ NDTV's Saibal Chatterjee rated it 2.5 out of 5, finding the treatment too glib for its themes but singling out Revathy, "outstanding as ever", and Nithya Menen as luminous; he judged Kukunoor's pandemic episode, set in an Old Hyderabad Muslim milieu, the best of the six by a fair distance.¹³ Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express called the anthology pleasant and middling.¹² ThePrint's review argued that beyond familiar markers such as biryani, haleem, the Charminar, and old Telugu comedies, the city remained for the most part a silent performer in its own anthology.¹⁴ On IMDb the series holds 6.1/10 from about 452 votes.⁷

References

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