Operation Safed Sagar, a new Indian drama on Netflix, takes place before and during the Kargil War, a real war waged between India and Pakistan in 1999. The war was touched off when Pakistani army forces took over vacated Indian outposts along the Line of Control that the two countries maintained in the disputed region of Kashmir. The drama concentrates on the Golden Arrows, the elite Indian Air Force squadron that fought in the Kargil War.
Opening Shot: Snow-covered mountains in Kashmir. An Indian MiG jet flies over. “27 MAY 1999. KARGIL WAR DAY 24.” The pilot in the MiG is straying from formation to find his wingman. But then a Stinger missile from the ground is launched, hitting the Indian MiG.
The Gist: Four months prior to the beginning of what was to become the Kargil War between India and Pakistan, the elite Indian Air Force squadron known as the Golden Arrows are getting ready for an important set of war games to help sharpen their training. Part of the reason is because the Indian prime minister will be arriving into Pakistan for the first time in many years in order to have a peace summit with the Pakistani prime minister.
The wing commander of the squadron, Tony Dhanoa (Jimmy Shergill), tells his pilots that he’s bringing in a “coach” as flight commander, to help his young pilots get used to the MiG-21s and prepare for whatever battles with Pakistan that may come. The new squadron leader is Ajay Ahuja (Siddharth), a veteran fighter pilot who feels guilty that he’s moved his wife and son to yet another base.
It doesn’t take long before the soft-spoken Ahuja makes his mark, though. After an exercise where one of the squadron’s best but most daring pilots, Dhali (Abhay Verma), leads his wingman Goofy (Arnav Bhasin) through a massive storm cloud and falls off radar, Ahuja grounds him for taking a risk that he didn’t need to take. Another pilot, Baldy (Mihir Ahuja), gets on Dhali’s bad side when he explains to the squadron exactly how Dhali could have avoided the cloud.
In the meantime, Pakistani army chief of staff Pervez Musharraf (Manu Rishi Chadha) is secretly planning on taking advantage of both winter and a treaty between Pakistan and India that has them vacate mountainous outposts during the winter months. He wants his soldiers to occupy the Indian outposts, giving them the high ground and an advantage that will help them take over Kashmir. When he gets a report that there are many more outposts than originally thought, he concocts a plan to disguise thousands of soldiers as Mujahideen and have them occupy the outposts.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Kushal Srivastava and Abhijeet Singh Parmar, Operation Safed Sagar definitely feels like it takes a lot of dramatic cues from Top Gun, even though the series is based on a true story.
Our Take: Even if you don’t know a lot about the Kargil War, which India and Pakistan fought between May and July of 1999, the story of Operation Safed Sagar is a familiar one. A new leader takes over an elite squadron, and the pilots doubt his leadership and decision-making at first. At least one of the pilots chafes against authority and takes too many risks. But the pilots learn to trust their squad leader’s instincts and become a finely-tuned fighting unit just in time to help win a high-stakes war between two mortal enemies.
The series is predictable on a lot of levels, not the least of which is the fact that it’s based on a two-month war that actually happened. But that predictability doesn’t take away from the exhilarating flight scenes from director Oni Sen, and the personal stories of Ahuja, Dhali, and Baldy. The rest of the pilots might be interchangeable, but they will form a unit that supports each other, drinks together, and becomes the “razor blade” that their wing commander, Tony Dhanoa, wants them to be.
Performance Worth Watching: Siddharth shines as Ajay Ahuja because he’s a forceful leader without being one that’s in the faces of his pilots.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Thousands of Pakistani soldiers, dressed like Mujahideen, are deployed into the snowy mountains of Kashmir.
Sleeper Star: Amrita Bagchi plays Ahuja’s wife Alka, who is very proud of her husband, and also likes to probe the lives of the bachelor pilots who come over to her house for a beer and a homecooked meal.
Most Pilot-y Line: One thing viewers do have to realize is that this is an Indian production, made with the cooperation of the Indian Air Force. While the Indian side is being portrayed as heroic, the Pakistani side — especially Musharraf, who became Pakistan’s president in 2001 — is shown as opportunistic and willing to sidestep established treaties in order to get what they want. It’s not nuanced at all, and it may tick off people who might want to see the Kargil War in a more nuanced way.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We appreciate how Operation Safed Sagar marries an entertaining fighter pilot narrative to a real war to make a drama that may be predictable but is still a high-stakes military drama.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.