The entertainment industry has been expanding throughout the last decade. We now have different online streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar available in the country to satisfy our entertainment needs. Web streaming and binge-watching have become everyone’s favorite way of spending leisure time. In India Video-on-Demand segment amounts to US$313m in 2020 with 113.3 million users. The revenue is expected to grow to 460 million by 2024 signifying the potential of the digital space and digital content. (Ref: https://bit.ly/2VIWIUS)
During the lockdown days when people were confined to their homes there was definite surge in the digital content viewership. Webseries being the only means of entertainment people have been hooked on to their favorite series or the latest movies at the comfort of their house.
Malayalam Web Series List
The rise in web series throughout the world is evident and Kerala hasn’t held back in joining the trend. YouTube being the primary platform for Malayalam web series, there are numerous options on the video streaming website that is interesting and fun. The web series explore different genres, comedy and romance being the most popular. There was initially a scarcity of regional content on digital platforms, but in recent years this has been overcome, there are now plenty of options when it comes to Malayalam content. Malayalam webseries are also available in Telegram channels to download for free and share the links with friends.
A shift can be seen in people’s viewing preferences today, moving from television audience to online content. This change in preference might be because of the richness of content online; online content is also shorter and easily accessible on all devices with an internet connection. People’s attention span have reduced and the compactly packed ‘webisodes’ are best fit for everyone.
Famous Web Series in Malayalam
Karikku Malayalam Webseries is one of the most popular especially the Thera Para episodes. This series is about 4 friends George, Shambhu, Lolan and Shibu, who are ambitious and energetic, yet jobless. This story of struggle to success garnered a lot of attention from the young audience of Kerala. Karikku now has more than 4 million subscribers on YouTube. The series Plus Two Class is also very well known. Karikku was founded by Nikhil Prasad. The actors of the Karikku YouTube channel have many fans and are recognized among the youth.
I promise R.I.A is a web series by Indian Pallassery released through Saina Movies on YouTube. This series has a more serious tone compared to the much preferred comedy genre seen in most web series. The storyline follows the lives of three teenagers from high school to college. It was also well accepted by the online audience.
The actress Archana Kavi has also released two web series on YouTube, Toofan Mail and MeenAviyal . The latter has over 1 million views. Meenaviyal tells a story about a brother and sister, and the incidents in their life.
There are several other web series on YouTube that cater to the malayalee audience. Love etc, The Premier Padmini, Jin and Johnny are all Malayalam series that have been received extremely well.
Growth of Web Series
The upward trajectory of online series has helped many venture into acting and other artistic fields. Making videos have also become easier in today’s day and age, a good quality phone camera is more than enough if the cameraman is skilled and talented. YouTube also allows a wide range of audience to be targeted; this makes it very beneficial for the creator of the web series.