Culture Trails

Still obsessing over Magnificent Century – which is a terrible spiral to be in, because it’s very long one (139 episodes, 2 hours each!). And now, I’m heartbroken. (Read on, no spoilers ahead) The first season was all about the heartache of love and longing, and (some) happy endings. Sort of. Many many scenes took my heart and made it soar. Made me ache and hope along with the characters, and in moments, definitely made me not want to be single – a rare occurrence certainly. In contrast, the second season took my heart, and smashed it hard, breaking it into tiny bits. I refer not to any one plotline, or a character, but just the tone of the season as a whole. While season one was full of youth and hope and victory over life, the second season is almost a loss of innocence, and life trampling on your best laid plans and making you cynical and bitter. Older, bolder and even wiser, but also hardened. It speaks of loss and tragedy, and how they shape us unchangeably ...

How glad I am to have caught this show before it went off Netflix (India) TL;DR: It’s the Turkish drama that’s arguably the country’s most famous, and quite rightly so. I’m completely in love with it, 1/3 rd of the way in. Best watched without knowing the history, because now that I’ve read up on it, I’m already mourning my favourites’ impending doom! But absolutely worth a watch both from a historical POV and a Pop Culture POV. Magnificent Century (the original, not its spinoff Magnificent Century: Kosem) is the show that took its home country by storm and spawned a few years of ‘ Ottomania ’ in other countries. A fictionalized version of Suleiman the Magnificent’s reign, it’s set in the 1520’s and thereafter. It focuses on the drama and scandals of his reign, and less so on his (considerable!) military and administrative victories. Given that Suleiman is commonly revered among the Turks even today as ‘the lawmaker’ and one of the most successful rulers of the Ottom...