Binge watching Sacred Games — Netflix-s first original Indian series that released last week — doesn-t feel as euphoric, once you start engaging with its heroes. After the thrill of experiencing this on-the-edge-of-your-seat drama subsides, what remain are several unresolved questions and markers of Mumbai at its grittiest worst. For those who haven-t read the novel, uncompromising superlatives are the only way to make sense of what you witness on screen — the fearless, hard-boiled characters, and their romance with bloodshed, gore and even, sex.

This could easily have been an ordinary tale of a delinquent-s — Ganesh Gaitonde Nawazuddin Siddiqui — monstrous rise as a cold-blooded gangster in the country-s mafia heartland, and his own end in the face of a looming apocalypse, which sets an anguished police officer Sartaj Singh Saif Ali Khan on a wild goose chase. But, writer Vikram Chandra, whose 2006 magnum opus novel was adapted for this series, was unapologetic in his brilliant prose and narrative. So, one would have expected little consolation when writers Varun Grover, Vasant Nath and Smita Singh took on the arduous task of recreating Chandra-s vision on screen, in episodic format. They did, if anything, make this larger-than-life gangster-cop saga very real, disappointing only, by having us anxiously wait for the next season.