YRF’s ‘Akka’ flips crime saga template with 800-year-old sisterhood controlling gold trade

Crime sagas have traditionally cast women as passive anchors — mothers, sisters and daughters. Going beyond that template, Yash Raj Films’ new series Akka centres on an 800-year-old sisterhood that controls the criminal underworld and gold trade in the fictional South Indian region of Perunuru.

Dressing progressive thought in a commercial gaze, the series tweaks genuine subversion into pulpy, mass-market dialoguebaazi, critics note.

While it attempts to present female power, the narrative ultimately appears to strengthen the very systems of oppression it claims to dismantle, they argue.

A deeper look suggests the narrative emerges from a cynical school of thought which argues that when women assume absolute power, they inevitably mirror the behavioural patterns of their male counterparts.