Arunabh Kumar, TVF Founder, Creator of Aspirants Defends The Role of Critics & Reviewers

TVF released Aspirants weekly starting from 7th April, every Wednesday and has ended up garnering over 75 MN views in less than a month

Aspirants, the latest web-series from the house of TVF took the internet by storm when its finale released on YouTube last Saturday. It got 10 Million views in just One day and ended up flooding the internet with memes and clips on its characters and scenes. It has also ended up becoming the 30^th Highest Rated show in the world according to IMDb Ratings of Top 250 Show in the world.

While Twitter was abuzz with all praise for the show with 4 of its key words Trending and #TVFAspirants Trending at #1, the show also got its share of not so great reviews from critics. While the fans of the show did not stop themselves from disagreeing vehemently with the reviewers, it was the creator and producer of the show himself, who came to the defense of the Reviewers and Critics.

Arunabh Kumar, founder of TVF and creator of the show, took to social media and put out a request to all the viewers and fans to have an open mind to listening to opinions which might be different from their own. He said, "… It's very important to listen to views that are different from our own. Reviewers and Critics by definition strive to tell the pros and cons of a story and their feedback and intent is to delve in all aspects of the creation and they play an important role in pushing creators like us to do better. Some of these reviewers were also the first to notice our work and talk about it".

TVF released Aspirants weekly starting from 7^th April, every Wednesday and has ended up garnering over 75 MN views in less than a month and has achieved a cult status amongst the Indian youth like some of its previous shows Pitchers & Kota Factory. The show is based on the struggles of three friends who prepare for the grueling exam of UPSC in Old Rajinder Nagar of Delhi. It has been directed by Apoorv Singh Karki.

One Reviewer called it "UPSC Na Milegi Dobara" and panned it for its overuse of the Brand Plugs in the show. Another Film critic took to Twitter and said that, "life is much bigger than your average upper-middle-class vanity: engineering colleges, dudebro jokes,…etc.". This particular tweet though found itself lacking in observation, as TVF is known for its shows about the lower class and lower strata of society and diverse characters like Panchayat, Gullak and The Aam Aadmi Family. In fact they were the first company who started a whole brand dedicated to tell the stories of the women and by the women back in 2015, now popularly known as Girlyapa, which recently released female centric shows such as "Girls Hostel" and "Interns".

While it definitely is normal for even the best content to receive not so great reviews but what is NOT normal is the creator of a show coming to defend the critics who have panned the show. Arunabh Kumar, who started the trend of Web-Series in India in 2014, has proven to be a pioneer in this department as well and has taken a commendable stance in favor of the critics in particular and content ecosystem in general.

You can watch all 5 episodes of Aspirants on TVF's YouTube Channel.