A show about banking could easily be dull. Director Hansal Mehta and DOP Pratham Mehta turned it into a neo-noir art piece.
The series chronicles the life of Harshad Mehta, a stockbroker who took the Indian stock market to dizzying heights in the early 1990s, earning him the nickname "The Big Bull." It details his meteoric rise from a middle-class jobber to the king of Dalal Street, and his subsequent dramatic fall following the exposure of a massive securities scam worth ₹5,000 crore (approx. $800 million at the time). Scam 1992 - The Harshad Mehta Story -2020- S01 ...
The narrative follows Harshad Mehta, played with career-defining brilliance by Pratik Gandhi. We see his humble beginnings in a small Mumbai chawl and his relentless drive to conquer Dalal Street. Harshad didn't just want to participate in the market; he wanted to control it. By exploiting systemic gaps in the banking sector—specifically the Ready Forward (RF) deals and Bank Receipts (BR)—he pumped massive amounts of liquidity into the stock market, causing an unprecedented bull run in the early 90s. A show about banking could easily be dull
What makes so compelling is the emotional whiplash. In the first half, you find yourself rooting for Harshad. He fights against an elitist system. He gives the common man a dream. There is a euphoric sequence where a simple vegetable vendor makes a profit on Harshad’s tip and buys a TV. You feel the hope. $800 million at the time)
What viewers will take away
More importantly, it changed how we view financial crimes. It taught a generation of Indians terms like "ready forward deals," "bank receipts," and "circular trading." It argued—successfully—that Harshad Mehta was not an anomaly, but a symptom of a weak regulatory system. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) was overhauled only after his scam, much like the FBI changed after Al Capone.
English▼
русский