Crime thrillers traditionally revolve around one question: Who did it? But for writer Mayukh Ghosh, that was never the most important mystery at the heart of Brown. The psychological crime thriller, starring Karisma Kapoor as detective Rita Brown, began as a conventional whodunit before evolving into something far more layered.
According to Mayukh, the version of Brown he first encountered was quite different from what audiences eventually saw. “Zee Studios wanted to revive an old project based on the novel City of Death and they were looking for someone to pick it up,” he says. “At that time it was a pure whodunit.”
But the team soon felt that a simple killer-identity mystery wouldn’t hold up for today’s viewers. “Once I came on board, we realised audiences today are cinema-literate. A pure whodunit might not always work.”
This shift pushed Mayukh and fellow writers Diggi Sisodia and Sunayana Kumari to rethink the core idea of the story. “That’s when we started working on the angle of the why. The core of any murder mystery is the motive. The search for that answer became the centre of the story.”
Guessing the killer was never the real mysteryOne of the common criticisms surrounding Brown since its release is that some viewers feel they can identify the killer before the final reveal. For writer Mayukh Ghosh, that was never a concern. “It doesn't bother me at all,” he says. “Otherwise we would have cast an unknown face so nobody could guess who the killer was.”
For him, the series was never meant to function as a pure puzzle built around a final reveal. He adds, “It was never just the point of finding out who the killer is. The story is also Rita's journey. She's trying to understand what she will choose while investigating this case and trying to find herself.”
Years of waiting created a new challengeBrown may have arrived on streaming platforms only recently, but its journey to release stretched over several years. Written during the pandemic, the series went through a long phase of production and delays before finally reaching audiences. It was also selected for Berlin Market Selects in 2023 along the way. “Brown went to Berlin,” Mayukh says. “But it took a long time before it finally released.”
The long gap naturally raised concerns about whether the material would still feel relevant by the time it premiered. “This was written in 2020 and 2021. Then it got made. Then it went to Berlin. Then there was a hiatus of a couple of years.”
Before the release, the makers went back to the edit and reshaped the format quite significantly. “Originally it was planned as an eight-episode, thirty-minute series. We re-edited it into seven episodes of around forty minutes each.”
Mayukh admits there was also a practical consideration behind the change. He adds, “We thought maybe if it's seven episodes, more people will click on it than eight,” he laughs.
