Special Ops season 2 starts with a recorded speech of Pakistan PM Imran Khan, followed by a montage of newspaper reports about riots and destabilisation of the government. Soon after, a Pakistani official receives a call from the fictional R&AW officer Himmat Singh, played by Kay Kay Menon. Singh manages to strike a deal for a captured agent in Nepal. Unlike Bollywood’s favourite spies, Singh does not fight bad guys with guns. He assesses information, sets up efficient back-channels with counterparts in other countries, and goes to work in an office, wearing a freshly ironed shirt and formal trousers.
He is a far cry from spies in Ek Tha Tiger or Pathaan, who handle both threat assessment and armed terrorists in remote lands, while also dancing to songs. Singh is among the new breed of intelligence officers on OTT who are bringing a version of ‘spying’ closer to reality. Spy thrillers like The Family Man (2019-2023), Special Ops (2020-25) and Khufiya (2023) forego the suave trigger-happy agents and villains. Instead, the thrill comes from the locations, the surveillance, and the quirks and dialogues of the intelligence agents, who look so ‘everyday’ that they could quite literally be your next-door neighbour. The shows balance the suspense and thrill of espionage with romance and family crisis.
“We were very clear right from the inception of the show that we wanted to show intelligence as a game of patience. For Himmat’s character, we wanted to focus on the psyche, the challenges of the man who is handling multiple assets, keeping track of operations while also dealing with bureaucracy, questions about expenditure and spending. He has to be cool, collected and patient,” said Deepak Kingrani, co-writer of Special Ops.
The character of Himmat Singh emphasises that what happens inside the walls of an intelligence headquarters sets in motion the missions that require guns, bombs and camouflage by agents.
“The success of an officer lies in the number of agents he is able to raise, and the ability to maintain sources like puppets,” said former R&AW officer Vappala Balachandran. In Special Ops, Himmat is the master puppeteer with four assets placed in various countries, who undertake missions assigned to them.
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The real spies
The Family Man’s Srikant Tiwari and Special Ops’ Himmat Singh are not the kind of spies that films have glamourised—muscular, tech-savvy, who can woo any woman on the planet and kill even superhuman villains. Bollywood and Hollywood have leaned on these tropes for so long that aspiring intelligence officers think this is the life waiting for them.
“Even now, when we go for recruitment drives at the grassroots levels, and ask, ‘why do you want to become a spy?’ The answer we get is ‘I want to be like James Bond’. These expectations are set up through films,” said DP Sinha, former Special Director in the Intelligence Bureau.
Newer spy shows want to change this perception. Along with shifting the image of the spy itself, the setting is what contributes to the realism of these shows. Authenticity is maintained by the makers when introducing themes or issues. Most are taken from contemporary geopolitics, each fresh in the viewer’s memory.
In the latest season of Special Ops, the focus is on digital threats, financial fraud and the political-corporate collusion. Kingrani, along with creator Neeraj Pandey and co-writer Benazir Ali Fida, relied not just on open source information but also on conversations with police and former intelligence officers to create the show and its characters.
These shows, depending on which organisation they focus on, use the simple tactic of subtly undermining the other agencies to make the protagonist heroic. In The Family Man, the former NSG commando Imran Pasha (Kishore Kumar) is shown as a comic relief—an uptight, muscular man who likes to use his fists and guns.
Another crucial feature of OTT shows and films is that they offer a glimpse into the personal lives of the agents who work to protect the country. Unlike the armed forces, there is no glamour associated with being the spouse of an intelligence officer. “People come to know of our failures more than successes because we cannot advertise the latter,” said Sinha.
Add to it the fact that when anyone associated with a covert operation passes away, there is no recognition or martyrdom. There are also the challenges of explaining the nature of one’s job to family and friends.
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‘Boring’ aspects of espionage
The first season of Special Ops mostly takes place inside a warehouse-like space in Delhi, where two government officials question Himmat on his expenditure. As he starts explaining, one is taken inside the world of spying, assets, fieldwork, conspiracies and bombings.
“The idea to show Himmat being grilled about the budget comes from the idea that there would be people questioning how these agencies use the money allocated to them,” said Kingrani. “He needed to look like he was one of us.”
But Himmat, while managing his assets and the nation’s security, also has to deal with challenges in his own home. While he does not let one impact the other, the show humanises intelligence officers by giving us a glimpse into their families and personal lives.
The spy life is not meant for everyone. High levels of secrecy and a looming threat to life mean that it’s not always compatible with family life. “There was once a person undercover in a border area who was fretting over the fact that he was unable to find a good match, since he could not reveal where he was working at the moment,” said Sinha.
In The Family Man, Srikant briefly gives up his job at the NIA to work in the IT sector because his wife wants a ‘regular life’.
While the officers negotiate their personal lives, threats never slow down at work.
“Counter-terrorism is like a jigsaw puzzle. You cannot get the whole picture until you get the last piece. It is literally like shooting in the dark,” said Sinha.
Loosely based on Amar Bhushan’s book Escape to Nowhere (2012), Khufiya touched upon how sensitive information from R&AW was passed on to foreign intelligence agencies. Special Ops shows how the delay in decoding information before the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack results in the loss of lives, including that of one of Himmat’s superiors.
The women of intelligence
Honey traps are a reigning trope in spy thrillers around the world, and Bollywood is no exception. OTT shows also have their fair share of the trope.
In Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story, Vinayak Shukla, a married attaché counsellor at the Indian High Commission of Colombo, is honey-trapped by a woman and highly sensitive documents are leaked. Upon learning the truth, Shukla kills himself. Himmat is then assigned an operation to capture the woman and uncover the larger plot.
It is later revealed that Himmat’s girlfriend, too, was set up as a honey trap. He manages to find out before being compromised in any manner.
“Honey trapping becomes the easiest trope for a lot of filmmakers to add a woman and glamour to the story. It is true that honey trapping does happen, but that is not the only complication for an intelligence officer,” said Sinha.
But there are self-reflexive moments too. One of the antagonists in Special Ops calls out a honey-trapping plot. ‘These are old tactics,’ he said
However, women in OTT spy thrillers are not merely written in as honey-trapping props.
In The Family Man, Zoya (Shreya Dhanwarthy) is a junior TASC agent who works under Srikant. She is at the centre of the action and loses the use of her legs while trying to save fellow agent Milind (Sunny Hinduja) during a terrorist attack. In Khufiya, Krishna Mehra or KM (Tabu) leads the operation that manages to get an R&AW mole back to India. She also hires Heena (Azmeri Haque Badhon) in Dhaka to work as an informant.
In Special Ops, field agents Juhi (Saiyami Kher) and Ruhani ( Meher Vij) are at par with their male counterparts, and do not hesitate to take charge when the occasion comes. In the latest season, an AI scientist, Dr Harminder Gill (Kamakshi Bhatt), is critical to Himmat’s operation.
“There are a large number of women who work in intelligence. Since there are no physical tests in the recruitment process for the Intelligence Bureau, women get the option of being a part of it,” said Sinha.
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The bid for realism
Be it Bollywood or the new wave of OTT shows, creative liberties taken by makers and former intelligence officers are not always amused by the stretch.
“R&AW agents do not carry guns. We actually take the help of NSG or even local police,” said Balachandran. “Often, those few narratives of an agent doing something daring or breaking protocol are what capture the imagination of makers, and end up becoming the main depiction,” he added.
And not every show ‘inspired’ by real events tends to stick to facts. Anubhav Sinha’s IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack pulls the curtain back on the decision-making process of intelligence agencies and the government. But a former intelligence officer who did not want to be named said that the details were not accurate.
“It also depends on whose view is taken up. Since there are restrictions in place, even former intelligence officers cannot divulge confidential information, and depending on flight of fancy, one fills the holes in the plot,” he added.
He, however, added that OTT shows fare better than films when it comes to the depiction of intelligence officers. “We are regular people, many even with a paunch and even terrified of our wives. We are definitely not muscular or dancing at pubs,” said the former officer with a smile.
But officers like Srikant and Himmat are more relatable fictional characters. They do not necessarily do daredevil stunts or romance women in exotic foreign locales. They deal with everyday reality, while keeping a hawk-eye on any threat that can disrupt the country’s security.
The rise of Ajit Doval, a former spymaster and Indian Bureaucrat, to the role of National Security Advisor has been instrumental in generating interest and creating more realistic portrayals of the men behind India’s security mechanism.
“When you look at someone like Doval, you see a common man who has achieved extraordinary things in keeping our country safe,” said Kingrani. Doval has been the inspiration for many characters in both films and OTT, be it Uri: The Surgical Strike, the Telugu film F.I.R (2022), to Special Ops and IC 8I4: The Kandahar Hijack.
“We wanted to ensure that youngsters who might want to join intelligence agencies have a relatable hero in their mind, and see an example of what they look like,” said Kingrani.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)