Glory: Pulpy boxing drama suffers from an identity crisis as it keeps gaslighting its own narrative

Welcome, then, to the contemporary streaming landscape. A system that does not cultivate ideas so much as exhaust them. A system where every robust logline is mined until it yields nothing but simply its outline. A system where genres do not deepen instead they proliferate into subdivisions, each one engineered to supersede the last. A system where pacing is mistaken for substance. A system where velocity replaces weight. A system where the screenplay no longer shapes experience; it functions as padding, a connective tissue stretched thin between successive twists. A system where characters are devoid of interiority, as they exist to shock more than to state. Within such a system, Glory, created by Karan Anshuman and Karmanya Ahuja, and directed by Anshuman alongside Kanishk Varma, emerges nothing but as a mere causality.

Divyenndu in a still from Glory.

On paper, Glory proposes a compelling architecture. Dev (Divyenndu) and Ravi (Pulkit Samrat) return to Shaktigarh, Haryana, to avenge their younger sister Gudiya (Jannat Zubair), who has been brutally attacked by anonymous men. At the center stands their father, Raghubir Singh (Suvinder Vicky), unyielding in his fixation on Olympic glory, singular in his belief that redemption, and legacy, can be forged through the making of a champion boxer. Even beyond the premise, the intention is suggestive. The series situates itself within the boxing circuits of Shaktigarh not simply to stage sport, but to interrogate a milieu structured by the pursuit of power: a landscape where athletics functions less as discipline and more as instrument to consolidate dominance. In this sense, the design appears coherent: that what begins as a sports drama might recede, deliberately, into the background, making space for a more layered inquiry into ambition, control, and the economies that sustain them.

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But then, we return to the conditions of the contemporary streaming landscape, where intention rarely survives execution. Glory is not what it proposes, nor what it promises. In practice, it resembles a mad pulpy mixture of elements assembled without discipline, reacting without coherence. At its most stable, it suffers from an existential uncertainty; at its most strained, it collapses into an identity crisis. There is a distinction between modulation and abandonment. To shift genre is one thing; to discard it entirely, mid-course, is another. Here, the narrative does not evolve as much as it resets. Every half hour introduces a new strand, not necessarily as development but more as a replacement. What emerges is less a world inhabited by characters than a surface curated for effect. The makers appear more invested in constructing a universe: varied and vivid, than in sustaining an interior logic. The series moves restlessly, without any real direction or consequence. It begins as a sports drama, transitions into a murder mystery, reframes itself as a study of crime and punishment, and finally settles into the realm of a dysfunctional family narrative. Along the way, it momentarily assumes the shape of a prison drama, has a (sub) plot involving human trafficking, and introduces infidelity as a passing provocation.

Watch the interview with the team of Glory here

If one were to read the series as an exercise in tonal variation, it might merit some serious concession. But what it ultimately reveals is not daring, but a landscape too guarded, too overdetermined to permit genuine risk. Its primary impulse is to capture attention, which must be seized, held, redirected, by design or by force. In that sense, Glory keeps gaslighting the viewer, pulling them away from any clarity. It moves in multiple directions, only to arrive at what was evident from the outset, to an ending that is neither earned nor surprising, simply deferred. In this sense, the series begins to resemble its own central preoccupation. It, too, appears consumed by the idea of glory, of scale, of impact, of recognition. But as it insists within its own narrative, glory demands sacrifice. And, so does serious storytelling.