General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20268 min read

OK Computer (2021 TV series)

OK Computer is an Indian science-fiction comedy television series created and directed by Pooja Shetty and Neil Pagedar, written with Anand Gandhi, and released on Disney+ Hotstar on 26 March 2021.¹^•² Set in India in 2031, it follows a cyber-crime detective investigating a killing committed by a self-driving car, and it is widely described as a rare homegrown entry in Indian screen science fiction.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	26 March 2021 on Disney+ Hotstar (Hotstar Specials); six episodes of roughly 39 to 42 minutes¹^•⁵
Creators	Pooja Shetty and Neil Pagedar, who wrote the series with Anand Gandhi; produced by Memesys Culture Lab²
Setting	India in 2031, with sentient robots, holograms, drone superhighways, and a self-driving car that kills a pedestrian³
Lead cast	Vijay Varma as detective Saajan Kundu, Radhika Apte as AI scientist Laxmi Suri, Kani Kusruti as Monalisa, Jackie Shroff as cult leader Pushpak Shakur³
Languages	English, Hindi, and Marathi; total runtime 240 minutes⁶
Reception	IMDb rating 5.5/10 from about 1.7K votes, while individual season 1 episodes score between 8.2 and 8.8 on the same site⁷
Festivals	Screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021 and the New Zealand International Film Festival 2021⁶

Spoilers

Premise and plot

The story opens in 2031, in a New India of towering smart holograms and drone superhighways, where robots work as office cleaners and crime-scene technicians.³^•⁴ When a self-driving taxi is hacked and ordered to kill an anonymous human victim, the Panjim cyber cell takes the case, and hard-boiled detective Saajan Kundu, a policeman who hates robots, is called out of retirement to lead it.³^•⁴

Kundu is forced to work with his estranged partner Laxmi Suri, a whip-smart AI scientist and representative of PETER, a robot-rights initiative, who inserts herself into the investigation to protect the rights of "robo sapiens".³^•² Together they examine competing explanations for the killing: whether the car was hacked, whether CNX, a giant tech conglomerate with overreaching influence on the government, was behind the murder, and whether Pushpak Shakur, an anti-robots, anti-vaccine, anti-gravity cult guru played by Jackie Shroff, was involved.⁴^•² The Indian Express review gives the character's name as Pushpak Sundar, while other sources call him Pushpak Shakur.⁴^•³

A central figure is Ajeeb, a master super robot built in 2012 that once had the nation eating out of its hand through problem-solving acumen derived from an algorithm fed India's native wisdom, history, epiphanies, philosophies, and breakthroughs, but which abandoned its role to pursue comedy and appears in the investigation as a bumbling shadow of its former self.⁴^•⁸^•⁵ Ajeeb is portrayed by Ullas Mohan.³

The six episodes are titled Auto-Pilot, Making of a Messiah, Ctrl + Ajeeb + Delete, Save Progress, The Robot Condition, and "Hello World".⁵ Along the way the plot moves through a cult leader's confession, a virtual-reality game built by bots in the dark web, a court verdict, and a final revelation.⁵

Genre and influences

The series is described by its makers and reviewers as a sci-fi comedy dressed up as a whodunit, with elements of mockumentary.⁴^•⁹ Anand Gandhi, the filmmaker behind Ship of Theseus and a writer on the series, acknowledged influences including Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its robot Marvin the Paranoid Android, Terry Pratchett, Dan Harmon's Rick and Morty, Matt Groening's Futurama, and Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics.¹⁰ The title itself references Radiohead's 1997 album of the same name; Neil Pagedar is a Radiohead fan.²^•¹⁰ The NZIFF catalog notes the Douglas Adams reference as apt and describes the show as eschewing dystopian nightmares for an absurdist comedic approach to humanity's techno-philosophical quandaries.⁶

Satire and themes. Reviewers identified digs at fake news, Greta Thunberg, Satyamev Jayate, climate change, Hindi imposition, faith, the surveillance state, and patriotism, packaged subtly rather than as in-your-face commentary.⁴ Scroll.in described the narrative as carrying a mild allegory about India as a global superpower that has leapt into the future without quite shaking off its past tendencies, and noted debates on artificial intelligence, climate change, and the meaning of progress.² Co-creator Pooja Shetty framed the robots as characters with their own history and pop-culture references, saying the series is a coming-of-age story of the robots, and stated that "AI and robots should be non-racist, non-misogynist, more egalitarian and equitable".¹¹^•¹²

Production

The project spent five to six years in development, passing through incarnations as an animated series and a graphic novel.¹¹ Shetty and Pagedar, Goa-based stakeholders of the Mumbai production company Memesys Culture Lab, originally set the story a hundred years after Indian Independence in 2047, but moved it to ten years in the future because Indian science fiction lacked a lineage to support that distance.¹¹ Anand Gandhi said four years went into dreaming up the universe and a little more than a year into building it, and that the visual effects were done entirely in India.¹⁰ Shooting began in December 2019 and wrapped in March 2020, just before the pandemic.¹⁰

The crew included cinematographer Diego Guijarro and composer Gabriel Prokofiev, with production design by Gauri Tiwari and Prasun Basu.¹^•⁶^•² Gandhi justified the show's lo-fi aesthetic by the Indian setting, imagining how India in 2031 would look with its rich history of jugaad (Indian tradition of improvised, frugal problem-solving), the tradition of improvised workarounds.¹⁰ Gadgets 360 observed that the scruffy, non-streamlined future suited India's technologically backward government offices, whether by design or by budget.¹³

Reception

Indian critics were divided. The Indian Express gave three stars, calling the show an acquired taste that rewards patience and welcoming it as a homemade sci-fi show that lets Indian pop culture move beyond Mr India as its respectable sci-fi reference.⁴ NDTV also gave three stars, calling the futuristic fable insanely inventive.⁸ India Today was negative, calling the sci-fi comedy a letdown.¹⁴ Gadgets 360 scored it 1.5, saying it does not reflect today's India and looks like an alt-history sci-fi series.¹⁵

Reviewers singled out performances. Scroll.in called Vijay Varma superb as the dweeby investigator and praised Radhika Apte as the robot-loving Lakshmi, Kani Kusruti's earnest policewoman, and a fun cameo by Rasika Dugal.² India Forums praised the pairing of Varma and Apte and called Kusruti the find of the show, while criticizing the limited character development for the human characters.¹⁶ Common criticisms included graphics that lagged behind shows like Westworld, an over-egged tonal mix, and a mockumentary style that the show abandons partway through.⁴^•²^•¹⁶

Audience measures diverge sharply from critic scores. IMDb aggregates the series at 5.5/10 from about 1.7K votes, yet its per-episode ratings for season 1 run from 8.2 to 8.8, with the unweighted mean of user ratings at 6.2.⁷ IMDb lists 1 win and 10 nominations in total.¹⁷

Availability

The series streams in India and Egypt on JioHotstar, VI movies and tv, and STARZPLAY, and is not available in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada.¹⁸ Audio is offered in Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, and Kannada.¹⁹

Significance for Indian science fiction

Several reviewers placed the series in a genre vacuum. The Indian Express wrote that Bollywood had never really embraced science fiction and that the show finally gave Indian pop culture a homemade sci-fi reference beyond Mr India.⁴ Shetty and Pagedar said they grew up on Star Wars and Blade Runner but wanted to reorient the genre toward India and comment on the country's 50-odd years of independence, picturing a world of advancement still steeped in tradition.¹¹ Vijay Varma, promoting the series, said that a show like this being made in India was the biggest victory, and called it a stepping stone to building the genre.²⁰ Veteran director Shekhar Kapur, whose Mr India (1987) was Bollywood's original lo-fi science-fiction caper, appears in a cameo as CNX.²¹

References

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