Weighing in at a door-stopping 940 pages, transformative novel Shantaram has long been seen as both an accomplishment for adventurous readers and a seminal text of travel, selfhood, and change in its own right. Gregory David Roberts included autobiographical details from his own incarceration to craft the tale of an Australian bank robber who escapes to the streets of Bombay.
Casting Charlie Hunnam as the vagabond escapee Linday, Apple TV+ has sunk a whole lot of money (plus almost $8 million in funding from Screen Australia) to adapt the mammoth tale into a 10-episode series. Shantaram premieres on Apple TV+ this October 14, and it might just inspire you to make your own prison break for a braver, more unpredictable life.
Being such a beloved text, Shantaram was almost adapted into a film many times since it was published in 2003. Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, and Aussie Joel Edgerton were previously tapped to play Lindsay, a heroin addict and bank robber who miraculously breaks out of prison for a multifaceted future in the slums of India.
This version stars Sons of Anarchy‘s Hunnam, and four of the 10 episodes will be directed by Justin Kurzel, with the remainder helmed by British-Indian director Bharat Nalluri.
Further Australian faces spotted in the trailer above include Richard Roxburgh and David Field, but beyond that we mostly get the escapism and exoticism of Hunnam’s adoptive Bombay home: sweeping birds-eye views of slums, sand poured out into a colourful mandala, and tenuous new romances and friendships.
The series was filmed in both Melbourne, Australia and Bhopal, India, with production halted due to COVID and the 2020 Indian monsoon season. If you’ve ever been gifted the book by your hippie friend who insists it’ll change your life, man, you might prefer to wait until mid-October to merely watch this ambitious new series and hopefully get the same desired result.
