The Ba***ds of Bollywood is Aryan Khan’s way of honouring the defiance that made Shah Rukh Khan a megastar

Irreverence is the tone Aryan goes for, and he doesn’t hold back. He uses every bit of the access he has as a nepo baby, and leans straight into it. Maybe then the only real difference between his style (he co-creates with Bilal Siddiqi and Manav Chauhan) and someone like Zoya Akhtar, whose Luck By Chance is still the gold standard for Bollywood-on-Bollywood storytelling — is this: Aryan never drops the mockery. He keeps it skit-like, loose, and loud all the way through. The show never takes itself too seriously, even when it’s dropping truth bombs. Maybe that’s exactly why the surprisingly disarming twist at the end lands so well. And amidst all the excess, Aryan pulls off something more interesting. He tells the story through the eyes of an outsider, Aasmaan Singh (Lakshya). And in doing that, he taps into the same outsider rage that once belonged to the biggest outsider of them all: his father, Shah Rukh Khan.

Naturally, Shah Rukh Khan makes an appearance in the show, and true to form, it’s laced with his signature self-deprecation, as he takes aim at the mythology built around his own stardom. His films are woven throughout the series, both as overt references and subtler thematic echoes. But beyond these callbacks, it’s the spirit of Shah Rukh’s journey that looms large over the show: first as the quintessential outsider navigating a closed industry, and then as the undisputed icon at its center. It’s as if Aryan, like much of the country, seems to have grown up on tales of an immigrant who arrived in the maximum city, and shook up the status quo, with unapologetic defiance. It’s also as if Aryan himself has watched that outsider become the ageing father fearing for his children in a world entranced by the N-word: nepotism, a curse he once began to undo without even knowing it. Viewed through this lens, the show acquires some significant depth. What initially plays out as satire or irreverent pastiche slowly reveals itself as something more intimate. An ode to the angst that shaped the baadshah. And the nobility that still defines him.

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So when, in the very first episode, we see Aasmaan being labelled as an arrogant, pompous newcomer, it immediately evokes memories of Shah Rukh Khan’s own early days, when he was publicly dismissed as being “too full of himself.” You recall those early interviews where a young Shah Rukh, cigarette in hand, sat with unshakable swagger as he fielded the most brutal questions, about his ambition, his confidence. And when Aasmaan ends up in a physical altercation with a journalist, followed by a media trial and even jail time, it’s hard not to be reminded of Shah Rukh once admitting to a similar outburst in his own youth, one that landed him behind bars and in the middle of a media frenzy. Even in the show’s opening scene, when Aasmaan insists on performing a dangerous stunt himself, despite everyone, including his manager, trying to stop him, it feels familiar. You’re reminded of Shah Rukh’s long-standing obsession with action, his insistence on doing his own stunts (think of Koyla), and all those films where he was proudly credited for “thrills.”

Aryan Khan’s debut series reads like an ode to the outsider spirit and rage of his father, Shah Rukh Khan.

It doesn’t stop there. The callbacks goes all the way to moments like Aasmaan winning his first award and dedicating it to his late father, much like Shah Rukh once did for his mother. If you’re really looking, the parallels go even deeper. Like that infamous story of a Delhi bloke rubbing off on a Deol so badly in his early days that the man couldn’t stand being around him. Or that same lad having run-ins with the underworld, and much later, standing up to troublemakers in a cricket stadium who misbehaved with his kids. Some of these connections are subtextual. But others are more direct. Like the full DDLJ-style monologue Aasmaan delivers to his nemesis Ajay Talvar (Bobby Deol). Or the advice Aasmaan’s father gives him: no matter what, never bend to anyone, no matter the pressure. This instantly reminds you of the troubling time Aryan went through recently, and the grace with which his father handled it. Speaking of grace, that image from Lata Mangeshkar’s funeral comes to mind, where Shah Rukh offered a dua and was mercilessly trolled for it. Even that moment finds a reflection in the show: during a K3G-style funeral scene, Aasmaan’s Muslim friend Parvaiz (Raghav Juyal) joins him to light his father’s pyre. There’s been plenty of curiosity around the asterisks in the title, and what The Ba***ds of Bollywood really signifies. The show eventually explains it. But to me, it’ll always feel like a hug, from a son to the baap of Bollywood.