Disney Plus Hotstar recently released a very intriguing and gripping murder mystery series, ‘November Story’. The extremely well-made Tamil series stars popular actress Tamannaah Bhatia in the lead, along with seasoned actors Pasupathy.M, G.M.Kumar, Vivek Prasanna and Aruldass. The series has been deftly helmed by Indhra Subramanian, to create a crisp, compact murder mystery.
The cherry on the cake is that November Story has received excellent reviews from almost every reviewer and media publication. We at Binged gave November Story a rating of 7/10 – one of the highest ratings we’ve ever given to a series. The show is a winner, any which way you look at it.
Yet, if you cast even a cursory glance at social media, you’ll find there’s hardly any talk or chatter on November Story. Neither the show nor its lead actress Tamannaah has trended even once on Twitter. It is quite a surprising thing to notice, given that shows such as SonyLIV’s upcoming Maharani, Amazon Prime Video’s recently released The Last Hour – a murder mystery just like November Story – and MX Player’s Ram Yug have hogged attention on Twitter timelines.
The fault for this anomaly lies very much at Disney Plus Hotstar’s door. The platform simply doesn’t know a good thing even if it stares it in the face. November Story has been extremely well-received by both critics and audiences alike. Yet, Disney Plus Hotstar is not promoting the show as it should. It has posted zero attractive creatives highlighting the excellent ratings November Story has garnered, a la other platforms do for their shows. ALT Balaji, ZEE5 and SonyLIV do it regularly for their shows, even for the slightly less liked ones. And here, Disney Plus Hotstar has a winner on its hands and what does it do – just sit on it like a dodo, without milking the stunning ratings to its advantage – huh, what’s it even thinking!
As for promoting the show – the platform just drops a daily ‘now streaming’ kind of post for November Story on its social media handles in the name of promoting the show – sans any fanfare or flowery words. The least it can do is post shots of all the rave reviews November Story has received. Jeez, platforms go gaga over even their average shows, and November Story is way higher on the ratings scale than average – but no hoo-ha from the platform whatsoever.
Let alone Disney Plus Hotstar, even Tamannaah’s reaction to November Story’s reception is quite subdued. She’s only retweeted a few congratulatory posts on her Twitter timeline, and that’s it – no talk on November Story on Tamannaah’s social media at all. She’s given barely any interviews to media publications in context of the show, no chat show appearances, nothing. Why is that, we simply can’t fathom.
The effective result is that even audience reactions to November Story – the gold standard for the success of a show – are muted. It’s as if the tepid attitude of both Disney Plus Hotstar and Tamannaah Bhatia has rubbed off on audiences. So, no one’s talking much about November Story – as if the show has already slipped out of audiences’ mind – barely a few days after release.
Like they say – out of sight is out of mind. If Disney Plus Hotstar wants to keep November Story in viewers’ minds and their social media – they must keep it in sight. A marketing blitzkrieg, voluble promotions and lots of social media chatter are what will set the ball rolling in that direction.
November Story is the best web series from the Tamil industry till date. It is a tightly shot, superbly written, compelling murder mystery – a rarity nowadays. And it deserves all the love and attention it can get.
Disney Plus Hotstar, are you listening?
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