The intriguingly named Tooth Pari has an intriguing plot to match. A love story unfolds between a vampire and a human, with the nether regions of Calcutta housing vampires for centuries, who seamlessly travel between both worlds. Journalist-turned-filmmaker Pratim Dasgupta — the man behind feature films like Paanch Adhyay, Saheb Bibi Golaam and Maacher Jhol, among others — has created and directed his maiden web series that streams on Netflix from April 20.

The Telegraph chatted with Pratim on the genesis and the world of Tooth Pari — which has Tanya Maniktala and Shantanu Maheshwari as its leads and boasts an eclectic ensemble cast — shooting in his city by night and the challenges of working on a new format.

Pratim D Gupta

What have the reactions to the trailer of Tooth Pari been so far?

It’s been great! When the first look came out last month — the image of a girl and a dentist — a lot of people started saying: ‘Freddy, Freddy, Freddy’ (the 2022 film in which Kartik Aaryan played a dentist), but with the trailer now it’s quite evident that Tooth Pari is not anything like Freddy.

The YouTube comments have been very positive. The interesting ones have been like: ‘We don’t expect this kind of a genre in India.’ That is very heartening. What’s also heartening is that everyone is appreciating new faces in the lead and the ensemble cast itself is very interesting...there are so many good actors. So hopefully, they will tune in on April 20.

Anything that is novel works more often than not, and the concept of Tooth Pari is not something that we have seen done well on Indian screens before....

Yes, anything that is clutter-breaking works. I had this one-line idea of a vampire and a dentist falling in love for a long time. Initially, I had thought of making a film about it. With Sujoyda (Ghosh, film-maker), I had done Kahaniyaan, which was a collection of three one-hour films. I had broached this idea to him, but he told me not to use it in a one-hour film because it had the potential to be much more. So then I changed it and made this film called Mirchi Malini with Paoli Dam.

This idea remained with me, and then during the pandemic, I started pitching it. Netflix got excited and picked it up. Then the whole world of the story started expanding.

I wanted to keep Tooth Pari very real. The idea of the series is that these people/ creatures could be one of us and live among us. You could just go down a manhole in Calcutta and discover a completely different world... that’s how wacky the idea is. The subtext of the show is that it is humans who are the actual monsters.

What were the challenges and the learnings of making your first web series?

The biggest challenge was the writing, but it was also cathartic in a way. To have the different strands and yet not move away from the main plot was the biggest challenge. Raj & DK are the masters of that, but not many have been able to grasp the long form. What Tooth Pari has been able to do is take a very Western concept and make a very organic Indian show.

How did you zero in on your strong ensemble cast?

Shantanu (Maheshwari) and Tanya (Maniktala) auditioned for their parts. Shantanu’s audition was very good, and though he is a big star in his own right, I hadn’t seen anything that he had worked in before. He brought a certain nervous energy to the audition which perfectly suited the part of Doc Roy. We did a look test with him wearing some very old-school spectacles and that vibe really suited him. He has an inherent sense of goodness, and that he has spent the first 16 years of his life in Calcutta and his Bengali is clean only added to the mix.

My favourite scenes in the series are the ones between the son (played by Shantanu) and his parents (played by Rajatava Dutta and Swaroopa Ghosh). Those were a delight to write and the actors made them flow very well, with the Hindi and Bengali dialogues working very organically.

I had seen Tanya in A Suitable Boy (Mira Nair’s BBC adaptation of Vikram Seth’s bestseller). I knew that she had done street theatre and had been personally handpicked and trained by Mira Nair. For the role of Rumi, who is a vampire, I wanted someone who the viewer wouldn’t loathe. They may find her sexy, captivating and alluring, but not hate her. I found that in Tanya. She’s a very soft person by nature, but she did very well in the instances where she had to bring out the monster in her.

Sikandar Kher used to do Insta Reels at night and I had tuned into some of them.... I found him to be a completely wild guy. He was very good in a comic role in Tere Bin Laden 2. I always felt he had a lot of untapped potential. His character (Kartik) is my favourite in the show.

The rest of the cast I knew of from before or had worked with them. Like Adil (Hussain) and Swaroopadi. I knew what Rajatavada and Kharajda (Mukherjee) could bring to their roles.

In the beginning, I struggled a bit with casting for Tillotama’s (Shome) character (Meera). I was going completely wrong in wanting to cast someone who is very glamorous. And then, I saw a picture of Tillotama where she had done a sari collaboration and she was looking very glamorous. I always knew what a good actor she is, and she was elated when she was approached for this part.

I never thought that Revathy would say ‘yes’. It was a real casting coup! Like Tillotama, even Revathy told me that she never thought she would ever be approached for a role like this. I just had one Zoom call with her and she said she would do it.

You have shot all your feature films in Calcutta. How was shooting Tooth Pari in the city a different experience, given that most of it happened at night?

There are a few day scenes, but most of the series has been shot at night. I know Calcutta best and I wanted to make Tooth Pari here. The vibe of the city, especially at night, goes well with the feel of the show.

The fact that we had people from Calcutta working on the show helped us power through. We knew which streets and which houses we wanted to shoot in. There were many locations we had seen during the day that acquired a whole new look and feel at night. We shot at a real police station to lend authenticity. We shot in a house near the Ganges which is 1.5 hours away from Calcutta. Raavan (directed by Mani Ratnam) was shot in the same house.

Tooth Pari has a lot of Bangla in it. Do you think you could have made a Hindi show with so much of another language even a few years ago?

The Family Man gave me a lot of encouragement... so much of Season 2 was in Tamil, and everyone watched it. It made me realise that the world is ready to accept a show in another language without getting put off by it. But I think it has to be done moderately. It was very tough for me to watch 1899 because it has some nine or 10 languages. Even the Bengali scenes in our show organically break away into Hindi... I didn’t want anyone to be alienated by the language. The main three characters never get into a lot of Bangla.