Poacher's creator Richie Mehta talks about the show and how he made sure he didn't 'make up' stuff for the screen
Poacher, the new series from Richie Mehta, has been praised by fans and critics alike. The show, inspired by true incidents of elephant poaching in Kerala, follows a team of wildlife officials as they bust a nationwide ivory smuggling ring. Like Mehta’s previous series – Delhi Crime – Poacher is also based on true events that are slightly dramatised for the screen. In an exclusive interaction with DNA, the filmmaker opens up on his process, what it took to create Poacher, and more.
Be it Delhi Crime or Poacher, Richie’s shows fictionalise real events and bring a new, fresh story to the screen. Talking about the dramatisation, the filmmaker says, “I do it in conjunction with the real people. I talk to them through everything and I don’t proceed without their permission. I never extrapolate dramatic high points beyond the reality. I won’t create a new dramatic high anywhere in the series that hasn’t actually occured. The only thing I do is sometimes I combine few characters into one or take backstory from one character to another. Sometimes I bridge the time a little bit.”
Poacher is set in Kerala with the primary language of the show being Malayalam. But characters also speak English, Hindi, and even Bengali, often switching languages mid-sentence. Making a multilingual show was not easy, Richie asserts, “I do see it as a product of the times. Having said that, when we finished the series, we were shopping it around to different platforms. Some people we spoke to still saw it as a disadvantage, the fact that we had multilingual dialogue, sometimes switching mid-sentence. Then Amazon Prime came and said this is a huge advantage. So, I have to actually give credit where it’s due.”
Poacher has been compared by many with Delhi Crime, an Emmy-nominated show no less. And Richie too, shares that sentiment. “The build up at the end of episode 8 gives episode 8 of Delhi Crime a run for its money, because it really is incomparable. So for me, it is about building it up when it is that extreme. I can’t make these things up,” he says.
Poacher stars Nimisha Sajayan, Roshan Mathew, and Dibyendu Bhattacharya. The show is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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 "Richie Mehta with Roshan Mathew filming Poacher")
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