Animation
Good Times
Netflix takes a classic sitcom, Good Times, and turns it into a vulgar, violent, sexually-charged TV-MA show.
“Everyone here is running away from something,” Karla tells Lin as they walk the streets of Bombay. But Lin is running harder than most.
Lin started out as a guy named Dale, who back in Australia was a philosophy student who broke bad in a big way. Drug addiction led to armed robbery. A robbery gone bad left a man dead and Dale in prison. And while Dale didn’t pull the trigger, he refused to say who did.
He was pretty sure he’d be dead before his 19-year-sentence was up—either at the hands of the authorities or his fellow inmates—so he escaped, stole someone else’s identity, faked a passport and made his way to India. It’s a great place, circa 1982, to get lost, what with its teeming streets and loose laws and bewildering underworld networks.
But is it possible that as he vanishes from the authorities, he might find … himself?
On the surface, Bombay in the 1980s seems like a pretty terrible place to turn your life around. Drugs are everywhere, making it less-than-an-ideal locale for a recovering addict. The streets are ruled by gangsters, though (by Lin’s telling) they’re a shade more moral than the local authorities. For most tourists, this crowded city would be bewildering to the point of maddening. But for Lin, it’s a place where he soon feels strangely at home.
Quickly, Lin’s surrounded by colorful, mysterious associates for whom right and wrong seem rather like colors of the same scarf: Pretty, but hardly necessary in the grand scheme of things.
Lisa is a heroin addict who makes her way in Bombay as a high-class prostitute. Didier wheels and deals in a local café while always looking out for his next male lover.
And then there’s Karla, a Swiss American often dressed in spotless white, but whose business is far more enigmatic. “In Bombay, everyone’s story is theirs to keep,” she says. And she keeps her own story hidden.
Shanataram (another name that Lin is given, which means “man of God’s peace”) is based on a bestselling novel by Gregory David Roberts. And while there’s still much controversy over how much the book follows Roberts’ life, there’s little question that the author sets a scene with vivid authority. For all its issues, the book made me feel as though I’d walked India’s hidden streets without leaving home.
‘Course, these streets are dangerous to walk, and rather difficult to even read about. And while it’s hard to say whether the Apple TV+ show will match the book in whisking you away to an exotic world, there’s little question it won’t shirk on the sex, violence, drug use or unfettered hedonism one might find there.
Early on, we hear some rank sexual discussions (though there’s been no nudity as of yet). We see people beaten horrifically. Drug use seems to be everywhere.
And be mindful, too, that in the world of Shantaram, the bad guys are often the good guys. Lin, our protagonist, is a deeply flawed, complex figure. If the show follows the book, he’ll be both a sacrificial doctor and a shrewd underworld henchman, a Bollywood extra and a relapsed addict.
And perhaps that’s fitting for the show’s apparent arc of both squalor and salvation—one that’d almost have a Christian tang if you squinted hard enough.
“There’s no redemption for the likes of you,” a policeman tells him as his henchmen beat him bloody. But perhaps there is, in this most unlikely of places. It seems that Lin’s soul is on the line in Shantaram—teetering toward utter oblivion one moment, crawling back toward redemption the next.
But muck and murk is never far away from Lin. And it seems to be everywhere in the show itself.
Dale escapes from prison and finds himself in India with a stolen name and fake passport. When he’s told by his persistent guide that that stolen name, Lindsey, is a little hard on the Indian tongue, he encourages him to shorten the name to Lin. It’ll convey a sense of power too, he adds: Lin sounds a bit like the Hindi word for penis, he says.
Lin finds himself cavorting with a group of international vagabonds like himself, and he quickly falls for a woman named Karla. But when Karla asks Lin to help her get another friend (a prostitute named Lisa) out of an infamous brothel, Lin balks. He’s on the run, he explains, and he doesn’t want to get involved. Lin’s going to leave Bombay quite soon anyway, to be free of its entanglements.
“You can be free of everything but yourself,” Karla tells him.
Lisa dresses quite provocatively, and she regales listeners with stories of her latest john (who apparently had a shoe fetish and ruined a pair of hers in an unsavory act). We learn that the brothel is keeping her against her will (she looks a bit bruised and disheveled when we see here there). Lin is shown shirtless several times.
Some of that time is when he’s being tortured, though. We see prison guards or policemen beat him brutally with batons as he’s strung up by his arms in chains. His body is badly bloodied, and we later see that the scars he suffered have in no way healed. (He’s later beaten again, this time by thugs and robbers on the streets of Bombay. He’s hit and kicked and robbed blind, and he’s left helpless to stare at a firework-filled sky.)
We hear that Lin was involved in a robbery that left a man dead. In an Australian prison, we hear about a beating he received, and he’s reminded that someone aims to kill him. When he escapes the prison in broad daylight, he’s worried that a guard might recognize him and shoot him. Someone apparently dies from a drug overdose.
Lin’s current life is built on lies, and a number of other characters lie as well. We hear Lin was once a heroin addict. Lisa is also addicted to drugs, and she begs Karla for a “hit,” promising to get clean once she levels off. (Karla gives her what she asks for.) Didier, one of Lin’s hedonistic friends, leaves Lin’s company to talk with “a man who might be of great consequence to my fortunes.” There are references to both angels and devils. A restaurant is filled with “hookers, dealers, gamblers and gangsters,” and money changes hands for some under-the-table dealings. (Drugs are apparently exchanged outside the restaurant.) Lots of drinks are quaffed.
Characters say the f-word nearly 20 times. We hear the s-word four times. Also on the swear menu: “a–,” “b–ch,” “h—” and the British profanity “bloody.”
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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