One of filmmaker Mallik Ram’s favourite movies is Shoojit Sircar’s Vicky Donor, which uses family-friendly humour to tackle the delicate subject of sperm donation. So it isn’t surprising Ram’s Super Subbu also deploys comedy to deliver important messaging about the tricky subject of sex education.
The Telugu series that recently came out on Netflix stars Sundeep Kishan as Subbu, a reluctant teacher of a birds-and-bees curriculum in a village in Telangana. Subbu faces challenges not just from the villagers, especially a group of bullies, but also from his moralistic father Kukkuteshwar (Murali Sharma).
Subbu manages to make headway with the help of his deputy Kantha (Get Up Srinu) and aspiring actress Swathi (Mithila Palkar).
Subbu’s dynamic with his prickly and bullying father is an important threat in the seven-episode series. Subbu is paying the price as an adult for a misdemeanour committed during childhood. Kukkuteshwar comes down hard on Subbu, crippling his confidence and decision-making abilities.
“A lot of people around me are like Subbu,” Ram told Scroll. “At least here in the South, the father basically takes control of everything. That’s why a movie like Bommarillu [about a young couple and their overbearing fathers] was such a big hit. Fathers, probably out of overcautiousness, try to do everything for their sons. It happened to me – I didn’t know how to fill out a bank slip.”
What if a young man who was taught to be afraid about sex had to teach sex education? That thought inspired Ram to create and direct Super Subbu, which he also written with a bunch of other writers.
Ram gave the analogy of seating arrangements in school. “The front benches go to the toppers and the last row is for the vellas [slackers],” he said. “There are also the guys in the middle rows, who are too afraid to go to the back and too dumb to be toppers. I am a middle bencher, like so many others.”
Apart from sex education, the series is also about Subbu’s delayed coming-of-age experience. “I always saw the show as a middle-bencher guy figuring out his life, trying to find his calling,” Ram said. “Everyone should have their journey to become a Super Subbu, actually be what they want to be.”
The series intertwines Subbu’s journey of emerging out from his father’s large shadow with the awareness that Subbu strives to create in the village to which he is posted.
“I also wanted to talk about sex education, good touch and bad touch, what ‘no means no’ actually mean, and how to present it in a different way,” Ram said. “While we were shooting, we realised that women were still using strips of cloths during their periods rather than menstrual pads. We were just a couple of hours away from Hyderabad and this practice was still there. It’s high time we start talking about these things through whatever medium we have at our disposal.”
It was important for Ram to deliver the show’s themes through relatable humour that was pitched correctly. “The show is honest, we’re not trying to be sensationalist or preachy, but we also want to keep it entertaining,” Ram said. “The moral compass was always there from the beginning. I went back to the films I loved, and which dealt with sensitive topics, to get the courage to do my own writing.”
Ram and his writers were also keen on avoiding what he calls “meme language” humour, or comic routines that mimic viral moments on social media.
“In many films, at least in Telugu, the lines are coming from social media, or whatever in working at the time,” Ram observed. “I didn’t want to take that path. I wanted to be fresh and original. There is a bit of slapstick in Super Subbu, but the tone is realistic too. It should feel like there is real stuff happening in front of you, rather than fiction.”
If Super Subbu gets a second season, Ram will expand the various plot strands already teased out in the present edition, from Subbu’s shifting dynamic with the villagers to Swathi’s progress as an actor.
“I never saw Super Subbu as a film because there were so many arcs to explore,” he said. “For instance, I couldn’t have explored Mithila’s arc so well. Or the friendship between Subbu and the bully gang, or even the mystery girl in Subbu’s life. Several arcs are left incomplete, like the sarpanch and Subbu’s boss Jeevan.”
Apart from some recognisable faces, Super Subbu has a minor army of secondary actors playing the villagers. Mallik Ram got lucky in his casting, he said.
“Sundeep has been a friend for a long time, and we had been wanting to do something together, but he was surprised when I said I wanted him to play Subbu,” Ram said. “I wanted Sundeep and the other actors to play roles that contrasted with their image.”
Ram had previously worked with Murali Sharma in his film Tillu Square (2024). Ram modelled Sharma’s righteous character on a maths teacher he had known. As for Mithila Palkar, Ram had been avidly following her career, and felt that her potential hadn’t been exploited.
“I have always been fascinated by Mithila’s natural acting,” Ram said. “I had reached to her before to cast her in a film that didn’t happen. Getting her to be in the show was one of the hard calls I made, but I knew that she could pull it off.” While Palkar has mouthed her lines, her voice has been dubbed.
The rest of the actors were found after months of auditioning. The sarpanch [played by Karthanandam] is one place where we got stuck,” Ram said. “I initially wanted a macho guy but then I felt, let him be a tiny guy. I found the right actor. The Netflix guys wanted to see how he would perform, and he blasted it on the first day itself.”
Also read:
‘Super Subbu’ review: A sex education instructor finds that humour is the best teacher
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