The word “Citadel” is not spoken until the end of the fourth episode of City: Honey Bunnythe latest entry in Prime Video’s attempt to create an international franchise by any means necessary. It’s almost as if the new show – based in India, developed by Sita R Menon and directed by the Indian filmmaking duo known as Raj & DK – is reluctant to embrace its own title, or at least acknowledge it in openly connecting with the unborn. the first entry in the series, which debuted to scathing reviews and public indifference last year. This is a feature, not a bug. While one of the spin-off characters is a younger version of Nadia, the spy that Priyanka Chopra Jonas plays in the film. City mothership, a spectator could watch The honey bunny not knowing other shows (including the recent set in Italy City: Diana) exist and have no difficulty following the plot.

More importantly, they would probably enjoy the loud and slickly fun The honey bunny even more so if he didn’t have to think once about what Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden were doing in the previous series. It is both a much better example of the original recipe City was trying to do, and an entry in the franchise that mostly manages to function independently of its siblings.

The six-episode first season splits its time between the year 2000, when Nadia (played by Kashvi Majmundar) is a student living a perpetually fugitive lifestyle with her former spy mother Honey (Samantha Ruth Prabhu); and 1992, when Honey is a struggling actress who discovers that her stuntman friend Bunny (Varun Dhawan) is actually a secret agent working on action films as a side job. Where too many modern dramas handicaps itself with unnecessarily out-of-sequence storytellingthe parallel chronological structure works for The honey bunnybecause there’s action and intrigue in both eras, rather than the fun stuff being front-loaded at the expense of coherence.

There are also live dynamics in each period. In 1992, Honey is a rookie agent who learns the ropes from Bunny in ways that draw deliberate parallels to their film work. Bunny is shown doing an absurd stunt involving a motorcycle jump, in one of the many instances of the show leaning into the ridiculous, larger-than-life nature of its main story. (It is not different from Gosling/Blunt Fall Guyonly with much higher stakes in exchange for a seemingly smaller budget.) And he and Bunny do some of their first flirting as he tries to teach her how to more convincingly act like she’s just been shot. The two are largely separated in 2000 for reasons that are eventually explained, but the way Nadia was trained from a young age to do countersurveillance and other espionage duties creates an appealingly unconventional bond between her and Honey ; Meanwhile, Bunny has some heartwarming moments meeting long-time allies Chacko (Shivankit Singh Parihar) and Ludo (Soham Majumdar). Prabhu and Dhawan have chemistry for days whenever they’re together, and the only times the storytelling really bogs down are the rare occasions – especially at the beginning of the finale – when people remember to talk about the Citadel itself.

. There are also some apparent murders at the end that feel

Samantha Ruth Prabhu in ‘Citadel: Honey Bunny’.

Trending Stories Related content Amazon has reached this whole Cityconcept in the smallest way possible, and the flagship show clearly suffered for it. But “sexy spies having affairs” is a durable and elastic concept that can work well no matter what else it’s attached to. You don’t have to have watched a second of the other two shows to appreciate it The honey bunny. But hopefully, if more

City When they’re done, they’ll learn a lesson or three from how well this works as a largely self-contained story. People don’t love franchises because they are interconnected. They like that the individual parts are good. All six episodes of