As soon as he came on board as the director of Rudra: The Edge of Darkness, Rajesh Mapuskar knew he had a delicious challenge ahead of him. With Ajay Devgn leading the cast of the Indian adaptation of Idris Elba’s Luther, he had to ensure that the narrative was steeped in the sub-culture of Mumbai. “When I was offered the show, I knew I didn’t want to sign up for a cut-and-paste job. Everything, from the characters to the nature of the crime, had to be tailored to the local sub-culture,” he begins. The director did so by making Mumbai almost a character, not a mere backdrop, in the Disney+ Hotstar offering. “We used the same locations — say, Asiatic Library and Gateway of India — but we explored them from new angles to capture the sinister side of the city.”

Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson in Luther