Netflix likes this pair, an elderly woman and her grownup grandson, sitting on a couch in their Kochi apartment, watching movies on the online streaming platform and then reacting to them on video. In fact, the OTT giant likes them so much that they have begun a series called ‘Indian Grandma Reacts To’, followed by the movie name.
Netflix invited the pair after watching the fun home videos that Sharan Nair, the real life grandson who plays the same role in the videos, would religiously upload on his Instagram account. “I began putting up short videos of grandma and me on Instagram since a year-and-a-half ago. Nothing serious, it’s just a bunch of home videos and grandma has been a sport,” Sharan recounts the story that led Netflix to take note of the curious pair winning many followers.
There have been two Netflix videos so far. First is the more famous reaction to the anthology film Lust Stories – all the ‘shy is coming’ subtitles lavishly poured over grandma’s Malayalam exclamations – and second is the duo watching Sex Education, another Netflix film.
The star is, of course, his grandmother, Thankam. “What to do, when you have a grandson like this? He makes me do all these things!” Thankam says on a phone interview, laughing. She has acted in ads before, she says, and as a girl, danced on the stage for festivals and school events.
Thankam did not initially know that Sharan was taking their videos and putting them up on social media. “But now she does, she has her own account too. She also asks how our Netflix videos are doing,” Sharan says.
The Lust Stories reaction video came first, in May. Thankam reacts most adorably to the scene where Kiara Advani, playing an Indian wife, tries a vibrator for the first time and it is accidentally switched on when she is with the family. Thankam, watching it next to her grandson, hides her face and laughs shyly. The grandson tells her it is alright, she’s done, and they can continue watching.
The video was liked, shared, adored by thousands online. Especially for the adorable grandma with her spontaneous reactions and expressions that Sharan would make the best use of. At one point, he gets her to say, “You can’t laugh, you have to be serious,” and completes the line, “when you do it.”
The newer one, uploaded this July, is their reaction to the Netflix film Sex Education. Here, Thankam reacts to a scene where a guy offers flowers to a woman: “Who needs flowers, they wilt, what you need is food.” Of course, not in that order, Netflix and Sharan play around with her words to make it funnier.
Thankam also offers some simple gyan: it is better to abort than have a child you don’t want (on abortion), it is up to an individual on how they want to dress (on cross-dressing).
The Netflix call came after a few Instagram videos did particularly well. Sharan names two of them – where grandmom tries to say a line from the HBO series Game of Thrones: "You know nothing, Jon Snow", and another where the two of them try to do yoga together. “In these videos, I have an alter ego character called Shalyam,” Sharan says. "Shalyam" in Malayalam means "annoying". Apt, grandma would probably agree.
“I am just a paavam (poor) ammumma (grandma). I can’t say lines very quickly and all when they ask questions,” she says. So, none of their videos are scripted, Sharan says. It is all spontaneous, in the moment, witty lines and expressions exchanged between a young man and his favourite relative.