The secret to Sacred Games is Saif Ali Khan (as Sartaj Singh). That you perennially sense a tonally subdued, Sardar, non-hero for a cop; let alone even once feel an overwhelming presence of one of Bollywood's longest surviving superstars on a platform/series, that didn't have a massive Indian marquee-name before Khan, says a lot about how secure he's grown as an actor.

The deeply internalised Sartaj first appeared in the short-story Kama in Vikram Chandra's collection, Love And Longing In Bombay (1997), almost a decade before his tome, Sacred Games (2006).