Mayasabha series review:

There are shows that simply tell stories. And then, there are rare beasts like Mayasabha, which feel like they’ve been pulled from the marrow of a people. This series is an interpretive state-of-the-nation fable with political realism, where dreams crash against the architecture of power. It doesn’t mythologise history but then wrestles with it, romanticises it a little and bleeds truth into its fiction. With Deva Katta at the helm, Mayasabha is a piece that comes out when one asks not what happened back then, but why we, the people, should still naively dream of change even when history tells us not to.

From the first frame, there is the scent of something volatile but tender. If you think this series is a biopic based on leaders, you are wrong, and it might confuse you. This is a series about politics, not the politicians, and mainly the system. It dances with memory and fiction in a brilliant way. Kakarla Krishnama Naidu (Aadhi Pinisetty) and MS Rami Reddy (Chaitanya Rao) are not stand-ins for the political giants that are CBN and YSR; instead, these are parallels and imaginatively real beings. They are representations of what political cruelty does to bright young men with ambition. The series captures the evolution of Telugu politics over three decades not through sermons or exposition, but through the bruises and delusions of its protagonists. The greatest achievement in its writing is that it is on nobody's side; there is no ideological colour, like the director’s previous work Republic, and yet there are enough colours and enough layers to bite through. 

Creator: Deva Katta

Directors: Deva Katta and Kiran Jay Kumar

Cast: Aadhi Pinisetty, Chaitanya Rao, Divya Dutta, Sai Kumar, Nasser

The plot, if one must reduce it to that, follows 30 years of KKN (Aadhi Pinisetty) and MSR (Chaitanya Rao), and the state of Andhra Pradesh playing a character in itself, as they chart distinct paths into the socio-political behemoth that is the Telugu political theatre. One is a tactician. The other, a bleeding-heart idealist. But this is not the story of heroism. This is the story of the erosion of belief and of identity, yet somehow these characters manage to save the show’s beating heart: their friendship.

There is a calm-before-the-storm sensibility to how Mayasabha unfolds. Characters begin sentences with confidence, only for fate to come in and change everything dramatically while it laughs in their faces. Deva Katta isn’t interested in melodrama. He is interested in systems. In a way, caste cuts deeper than ambition. In the way ideology flips when ambition demands. In how men become leaders only after they’ve been betrayed enough times to learn to play the game yet somehow keep their conviction alive. How does one do that? Deva Katta might have what seems like directions for answers. 

The show refuses to sanctify. KKN and MSR are not saints. They are dreamers who are punished for dreaming. They bleed and blunder. And it is through their very human stumbles that the story finds its most tender truths. KKN is given a heartbreak early on, and MSR is given a reality check of his identity. And it is not just that the show treats them as heroes. There are multiple important storylines. You recognise the characters of Shatru and Ravindra Vijay, as they have been previously immortalised by our finest filmmaker, RGV. And yet here, they find a more humane place. The show doesn’t shy away from depicting star worship, college politics, street violence, caste-based rowdyism and the rise and fall of communism. Above all, this season focuses on the domino effect that The Emergency, as the single most controversial political decision in the country, had on everybody.

Another of the triumphs of Mayasabha is how casually and confidently it handles caste. Not as a topic to be circled around or debated, but as air, it’s always present in Andhra, sometimes suffocating, sometimes helpful and the other times, a pure nuisance. These are conversations many of us fear to have in public but keep on having at our dinner tables. The show speaks the language of Andhra and Telangana, not just in dialect but in discomfort too. It trusts the audience to have the knowledge that caste is not an “issue” in politics. It is politics for us. 

And yet these are just reasons to appreciate this show, but where you fall in love with Mayasabha is the emotional scaffolding that holds the show’s historical reimagining together. The friendship between KKN and MSR is perhaps more fictional than the events that surround them, but it is the show’s moral centre. Without it, this would be a series of compelling historical moments. The writing allows for their friendship to breathe, first when they lock horns, and then when they bond in their naive ambition phase and then in political rivalry. You feel the ache of what a “best friend” means in a warlike world. It’s both friendship and rivalry dancing side-by-side. 

One advises the other in the toughest point of their life and the next moment, declares war on the same move. It’s the mutation of friendship, heart, growing up together, and the fight, the divide based on caste, region, and political wings. They pick a side yet remain by each other too. And that is a wonder in writing, my friend. With it, the show becomes a haunting fable. It asks you: what happens when two people who once imagined the world as a place of shared dreams must suddenly reckon with a world that only sees them as their surnames?

The performances are extraordinary across the board. Aadhi Pinisetty masterfully portrays the educated man’s burden. His stuttering KKN simmers, a man perpetually strategising, perpetually excluded. Chaitanya Rao’s MSR is an open wound, naive and noble; his beautiful smile stays with you. Together, they create a tragic rhythm that builds until the final act, the great Greek tragedy moment for us Telugu people — the Vennupotu (the betrayal) against RCR, based on NTR. That chilling moment lands both as a shock and an inevitability.

Sai Kumar, as RCR, swaggers in a Godfather-meets-demigod act, the trump card of the show. He delivers the peak of pleasure and is rightfully served with fewer scenes. And then there is Srikanth Iyengar, hilarious and horrific as the petty, power-hungry Chevella Bhaskar Rao. The ensemble is a feast. Ravindra Vijay, Shatru, Nasser, and Divya Dutta all add notes of helplessness, revenge, gravity, and cunning. 

Technically, too, the show is an original. Praveen KL’s editing brings a sleek, muscular Western touch and also, at times, a playfully new-age one. Those spaghetti fonts make the show more enjoyable. Shakthikanth Karthick’s score floats between the dramatic and the enjoyable, with folk beats for the masses, thunderous strings for these worshipped titans and kicking rock music to make it exciting for the younger audiences.

But Mayasabha is not without its limits. For those unfamiliar with the state' political history, some of its richest metaphors will slide by. If you do not have the context, you will be watching an entirely different show. There is an insider language at play here, not completely inaccessible, but definitely not spoon-fed either. And perhaps the biggest complaint I have is that it ends too soon. The storytelling is too potent, the world too intricately built, to leave it here. Another season is not just welcome. It is essential.

Deva Katta deserves every flower we can throw his way. In a time when Telugu content on OTT has often disappointed with lazy plotting and borrowed aesthetics, Mayasabha arrives like a thunderstorm. It is proof that serious, nuanced, literate political storytelling can exist and thrive in the Telugu space. It doesn’t need stars. It needs guts. It needs a soul. And Mayasabha has both.