Mitti De Baway: Mahira Khan, Wahaj Ali and a Drama Built on a Grand Scale (extended)

Khandaan- A Bollywood Podcast

The hosts and guest Sophia Q review the high-budget Pakistani drama Mitti De Baway, focusing on its star power and production scale. The con

Key takeaways

• Mitti De Baway utilizes a complex three-timeline narrative structure that requires focused viewing.
• The production design is noted as grand and impressive, though criticized for excessive use of slow motion.

Main topics

• Mitti De Baway review
• Pakistani drama industry trends

Notable quotes

I can't buy bread with principles.

Conclusion

While the technical scale of Pakistani drama is rising, industry-wide

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey pick my best for some night Speaker 1 (0:15) Hi, this is Asim. This is Sujoy. This Speaker 3 (0:17) is Amrita. And Speaker 1 (0:18) you're listening to Khan Daan, a Bollywood podcast about the three main Khans of the Hindi film industry. Amir, Salman, and Speaker 3 (0:25) Shahrukh. Hi, you're listening to Khan Daan, a Bollywood podcast regular feed. Thank you so much for your support over the years. We now have a Patreon channel with bonus content and exclusive merch for those of you who would like to support us. Every dollar goes towards creating more and better content. Visit us at patreon.com slash khandaan podcast. Speaker 1 (0:49) Hi and welcome to a new episode of Khandaan Podcast. My name is Asim Birney and I'm joined with my lovely co-host Amrita. Hi Amrita. Speaker 3 (0:55) Hello Asim. Speaker 1 (0:57) Sujoy nikal gaya. He didn't want to be part of this. He was like, this is way too pro-Pakistani for me. I don't want to be part of this episode. So we have Sophia. Sophia Q, how I call her, because that's she like. I've been following her content for so long. Amrita, you might not know because we actually became Twitter friends. I Speaker 2 (1:18) love Speaker 1 (1:18) all of the takes she has, like the bad Bollywood, the music. But the thing I go to for you is for Pakistani drama recommendations. And Speaker 3 (1:30) that's Speaker 1 (1:31) why we have you here because this episode is going to be about Mitti De Baave. Speaker 1 (1:37) Why did you Speaker 3 (1:38) say it like that? I Speaker 1 (1:39) don't know. I don't know. This is my as Punjabi as I can get. That was that. Sophia, are you Punjabi? Speaker 2 (1:49) I am not Punjabi. None Speaker 1 (1:50) of us are Punjabi speakers? But I do understand Speaker 2 (1:53) Punjabi. So Speaker 1 (1:54) we're all a bunch of Myra Khans here on this. Yes. Yes. Speaker 3 (1:58) Absolutely. Representing Speaker 2 (1:59) Myra. Speaker 1 (2:01) Yeah, no. Yeah, Sophia, you want to tell a bit about your Twitter and Instagram content? Sure. Speaker 2 (2:08) I've been reviewing Pakistani dramas since around 2009 because there wasn't really any kind of avenue for that at the time. And I watched it and I wanted to discuss it, but there was no one to discuss it with. So I started reviewing and then that kind of moved into around COVID. I started writing and then it moved into TikTok. And of course, I've been active on Twitter since 2018 or so. So it's just kind of always been everything started around Pakistani dramas. And I included my love for Bollywood. And that's where we Speaker 3 (2:38) just kind Speaker 2 (2:38) of Speaker 3 (2:38) took off from. One more reason that I'm jealous that I don't have TikTok because I would have been. on like I know so many people who are obsessed with Pakistani dramas and they're just like looking for like you know better content around it because they're just like who's talking about it and who's like because a lot of it is in like Urdu and stuff right so exactly like people are just like well I don't know what they're saying and like the translation is the pits like how do I engage with this so it's always one of Speaker 2 (3:09) my Speaker 3 (3:09) biggest Speaker 2 (3:09) things has been that I'm constantly just cheerleading for subtitles not because I need them but because other people need them and it's kind of a disservice to the industry when no one else can watch it. Speaker 1 (3:22) Let's talk about that a little bit before we get into the drama because there's a few elements that have kind of popped up on the Pakistani content side of things, right? I agree with you completely. a subtitle thing annoys the crap out of me. And I don't know if you guys have it, but a lot of times when I switch on subtitles, there's subtitles in Hindi instead of in English. So it's Speaker 2 (3:42) automated. It's automated. That means that it's just picking it up from the audio and they've not included them at all. Speaker 1 (3:48) Yeah. Annoying. Like Speaker 3 (3:49) Hindi as in like the script? Speaker 1 (3:51) Yeah, yeah, Hindi. Because I'm thinking they thought, oh, our majority of audience is coming from India, which is probably true, right? So the automated captions when you turn them on are in Hindi instead of translated English. But that's Speaker 3 (4:07) interesting because there's a lot of South Indians that watch Pakistani dramas and Speaker 1 (4:12) read Speaker 3 (4:13) Hindi. So that's really interesting. So Speaker 1 (4:16) it's serving nobody, basically. Speaker 3 (4:17) Yes. You're serving... Serving like five people who are like, get to Pakistan. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 (4:24) You're serving the people that don't want to watch your stuff, basically. So true. So that's annoying me. But I think there's a few channels that are on there that have really kind of like upped their game. And I think Green TV is one of them, right? Yes. Speaker 2 (4:40) Well, sort of, yes. When they started, I feel like they had really started on a positive note. They were trying to introduce all this progressive content. But then I think in the last two years or so, they've kind of been... I don't even know how to say it. They've been selective. They've been picking one or two good shows and then the rest is just catered to the masses. Speaker 1 (4:59) But this Speaker 2 (5:00) is definitely a big one. Speaker 1 (5:02) Is Speaker 3 (5:02) it an aggregator or is it like a content producer? Because I've never heard of Green Team before this show. Speaker 1 (5:10) It's a producer. I think they're like an official. Like an official. Yeah, they launched like a couple of years ago and I think they came later in the game. I want to say Speaker 2 (5:20) it was like 2015. 23 or 2024. Yeah, Speaker 1 (5:23) quite recent compared to the other ones. And I think they were trying to say like, we're the Pakistani HBO. I think that's the messages that they were trying to do. We're going to do higher budgets, higher production values, and not the same like gisi putti khania. That's what their pitch was, I think. Speaker 3 (5:42) But they've kind of fallen into the trap. Yeah, like it's interesting to me because like we've gone through that. in India as well right like there's always every few years there's somebody that comes in like listen we're different Speaker 1 (5:54) like Speaker 3 (5:55) we believe in the content like content is supreme we want like something progressive we want something that speaks to the India of today and then like six months down they're all doing sas bohu serials because that's where like the people want to watch and you know that's the audience and you're like do I want to make money or do you want to have principles and people are always like well I'd rather have money Speaker 1 (6:19) I can't buy bread with principles. But the second thing I also want to talk about is this, Amrita, you might not know this, but there's been a lot of buzz in the news lately about ARY +, which is this new app that ARY has launched. And the idea would be, so the CEO was going around basically saying, you know, oh, we went to Netflix and Netflix said, uh we we won't be able to give you the same platform that indian content has and he said that oh if we're not going to treat it fairly why would we then want to be part of the netflix environment but the flip side there's another story to this is also that it's not just about the content which i 100 agree with i think definitely there's a kind of an imbalance on how the two countries are treated by netflix asia but they did say that there's uh Filming requirements, it needs to be in 4K. Audio and sync needs to be in a certain way. And Pakistani production environment cannot cater to that. They're not at that level yet. So there is an infrastructural issue, but there's also been requirements from Netflix that they couldn't do. So there's two parts of the story, right? But ARY Plus has been launched. Sophia, have you downloaded it? Have you started it? Speaker 2 (7:46) I haven't had the need because we still have everything available here on YouTube. But I do want to download it to see how it works. Speaker 1 (7:54) Yeah, yeah. But Speaker 2 (7:55) I'm not really pro this idea. So Speaker 1 (7:59) the other thing that you also said is that if other drama producers want to get on there, we'll just drop the naming. We won't call it ARY+. We will just call it like something else. It doesn't need to be ARY branded. We just want to create a platform for everybody. So it's kind of an interesting story that they're telling at least. Speaker 2 (8:18) The thing I, the issue I take with this is if you're trying to make Pakistani dramas available for a wider audience. This is not the way because it's insular. Speaker 3 (8:28) It's an Speaker 2 (8:28) insular platform that's basically for Pakistani content and Pakistani content alone. So no one's going to be like when you're scrolling through Netflix and you find a Bollywood movie or a Hollywood movie, you just choose what you want to watch or a K-drama. But that's not the experience you're getting here. And it's very rare that you download a platform just for one type of content. Speaker 1 (8:49) The other thing that I was also thinking about is that like, I know that like at least my mom and my aunties and stuff like that, they're just used to watching this on YouTube. Like they don't even know how YouTube actually works. They don't use the search function. They just scroll until, how are they going to navigate an app? Like there's no way that they can, like the learning curve of your core audience is going to be very, very steep here. Speaker 3 (9:12) Exactly. I Speaker 2 (9:13) agree. Speaker 3 (9:14) I don't understand why like YouTube, like I understand that the money is in Netflix and not on YouTube, right? Because it's very much like news driven and Google keeps switching it up every few months, it seems to me, especially of late. But in terms of reach. There's nothing like it. So if they try to take, especially ARY has like this really great library of content that they've already produced that people around the world are obsessed with, right? Like, did you ever watch, like, Asim, I don't know if you ever watched like Hamsafaran? No, I Speaker 1 (9:54) never did. I never did. We'll come to that Speaker 3 (9:57) in a minute. We'll come to that in a minute. Don't think I've forgotten that, but we'll come to that in a minute. But I know people that to this day on this side of the border are, whose entire personality is those two shows, right? Speaker 3 (10:12) I remember when Humzafer came out and we still had, we used to have this, this forum. Like, do you remember the message boards that we used to have back in the day? Yep. And there used to be one called India Forum. Yes, I Speaker 2 (10:26) used to be on there too. We were all on it, right? And it was like, Speaker 3 (10:32) it was all like. Indian serials, right? And those were the golden years of the Hindi serial where you had these iconic pairings that everybody was writing fanfic over and stuff. And then Hamza for it came in out of nowhere and it just exploded all over, you know, India forums. And it was very interesting to me because I wasn't living in the country at that time. Speaker 3 (11:00) I had grown up and I say I tell the story quite often, Sophia, but like when I was growing up in Delhi in the 80s, we used to get Pakistani, the Pakistani PTV. That's what we used to get. And so we used to watch PTV dramas because it used to show up on our TV screens. Like we'd just pick up the signal. So I grew up watching things like Dhup Kenaare and Bakra Kishtompe and just random things that when I talk about it to my Pakistani friends, they're all just like, what do you mean you saw Bakra Kishtompe? I'm just like, it used to play and it was funny. So we used to watch it. So I, and after the 80s, because then in the 90s, we got, cable TV and we all just sort of like switched to star. And so I never even thought about Pakistani content until Hamza Far came back. And then like, there's a lot of people that give Fawad a lot of grief about the way that he is and, you know, what they assume are his opinions about Pakistani drama. But I also think that, you know, he needs to get his flowers because the sort of resurgence in fandom towards Pakistani dramas and the appreciation that a lot of people have for its writing comes from like the fact that Fawad was in Kamsafer and then he was in Zindagi Gulzar Hai. And in spite of playing like deeply unlikable characters, you know, it was the fact that he was a star. And he just like sort of carried that on. So it's just very interesting to me to see where the money is moving in Pakistani content more than anything else. I Speaker 2 (12:50) mean, I don't even understand. Like a lot of the crowd pullers in Pakistani content right now are like Danish Temur and some of these more toxic dramas. I don't want to get like heat for that, but it is what it is. I don't know. It's like the star plus of Pakistani content. Speaker 1 (13:11) Yeah. So I'm kind of like, I don't watch a lot of them, like just generally, like unless there's like a really critical buzz about something, then like I did watch that last Hania Amir one, not even the last one, the one before that with Fahad Mustafa. Fahad Mustafa? Speaker 2 (13:28) Yes. Speaker 1 (13:29) yeah i love that one and then i wanted to watch the follow-up with the tesla in it and that just was ridiculous i've dropped off within two episodes um uh see i don't even know the names of them Speaker 1 (13:43) yeah that was popular Speaker 2 (13:44) though it was really popular yeah it was yeah but i Speaker 1 (13:47) just couldn't take i just couldn't take the tesla of it all like Speaker 3 (13:50) what is the tesla what's the tesla show they Speaker 1 (13:53) clearly Speaker 3 (13:53) they clearly Speaker 1 (13:54) rented the tesla jeep or whatever the big tesla like the cyber truck yeah exactly And they clearly had it for like three days. So they shot like all of their sequences because he's supposed to be the rich toxic guy with that Cybertruck in three days. And they just jammed it in the first few episodes. And then when they ran out of it, I think, no, no, no, that was the other car. They burned the car. Yeah, they burned the car, right? And so it was just a hilarious one where they're like, take as much footage as you can. It was just hilarious. Speaker 3 (14:29) So it didn't even have anything to do with the story. It was just like a marker to show like the Speaker 2 (14:33) guy. Speaker 3 (14:33) Just Speaker 2 (14:33) to Speaker 1 (14:33) show him how rich he was, you know. I love it. Like he was rich with the Cybertruck and then he would also go clubbing. And the club scenes were the most ridiculous one in Pakistan because you have like seven people in a club and they're like. I like, I won't like, this is the thing I've been meaning to talk more about Pakistani content. You're going to get in Speaker 2 (14:57) trouble for this, just letting you know. Speaker 1 (14:58) This is khandaan. Khandaan is always in trouble. It's good to get heat from my own people for once. I just get heat from Indian people. Like, apne log hai, maro mujhe jute hai. It's fine. What I was going to say, I want to promote a lot more and talk about these things, but a lot of them are just not good enough. I feel, you know, they're not. So I gave it a try. So I was watching Aap Ki Vizag. Speaker 3 (15:22) Listen, Sophia tried. Sophia tried, right? Like, Sophia tried really hard to save you from the fire. Speaker 1 (15:29) It's okay. I do not care. I really don't. It doesn't matter who's talking. I don't care. No, but what I was going to say is I did watch Aap Ki Izzat, which I'm kind of following because the, like, I think later on, and I mentioned this to you, Amrita, too, that there's Speaker 2 (15:45) a Speaker 1 (15:45) few very powerful scenes coming later on. Yes. But, I've been speaking about this just generally, like about cultural buckets lately on the show, that it is hard to connect sometimes when you're not part of that milieu. And I was having that discussion about watching a Telugu movie. Me and Sujoy went to watch a Korean movie, Hope, which was pretty good. But then it just went completely off the rails. But there's certain things that you can connect with and certain things you can't connect with. And me being a burger, like having been raised outside of Pakistan, there's a lot of storytelling, the way the story is told and the way kind of the family dynamics are. I just can't stand it. Like after a while, I'm