Hello World web series review: Yet another opportunity missed in cracking the stories of IT lives

Think about Sekhar Kammula’s 2007 film Happy Days, but in a tech-campus setting. Well, that is exactly what Hello World is all about, or at least what the movie tries to be.

The plot is quite simple — a group of interns at an IT firm are put together by a maverick mentor as a team to develop a piece of software.

Does the idea sound familiar? The whole series is wrapped in generic coming-of-age tropes.
Here they are:

• A tomboyish girl
• A guy who falls in love with a North Indian girl; after realising he was being used, he falls back in love with a “sanskari” South Indian girl
• A village boy trying to fit into the urban lifestyle
• A boy ditched by his committed girlfriend
• A mentor who is hip and cool, and tries to connect with you by breaking down jargon to simpler levels.

Adhi sangathi….! Set ayipoyindi anukuntam kani, edho oka twist matram pedataru

Pettali ga mari??‍♀️

Did you face any plot twists in your first job?
Watch #HelloWorld for more relatable content#HelloWorldonZee5 #AZEE5OriginalSeries pic.twitter.com/a8YRq9FEtd

— ZEE5 Telugu (@ZEE5Telugu) August 22, 2022

Cliched story and characters

If you think you have seen these stories elsewhere, yes, it is pretty much every teen/young-adult/coming-of-age drama/dramedy. The story is simply riddled with several cliches that you would end up watching on auto mode.

You won’t be curious about how the drama progresses or, for that matter, how the conflicts get resolved. It is something that you can predict and confirm.

If you think your writing is bad and can no longer sustain your imagination, watch this web series. I’m pretty sure that you will end up predicting every character’s destiny to a degree that you will feel that you are simply a “god of writing”.

Actors cover up shortcomings

That’s definitely the actors’ performances! Every actor puts her/his best foot forward and covers up for the shortcomings in the simplistic plot.

It has been a while since I have seen such a mature delivery of performance, the way Aryan Rajesh or Sadaa carry their roles.

A special mention here is deserved by Anil Geela of My Village Show vlogs. The guy simply kills it as a simpleton in the IT world.

Ravi Varma does his regular bad guy thing. Now, he must be able to sleepwalk through these roles being thrown at him.

Too much tech jargon backfires

The music and cinematography are adequate. The story reminds me of a YouTube series called Software Engineer (Shanmukh). It does a pretty good job of telling a regular software engineer’s story, without going overboard with the technical jargon the way Hello World does.

Maybe the writers wanted to say “hey, we did our research”; but the whole angle of too much tech jargon backfires.

Hello World is a great opportunity missed, as we still haven’t cracked the stories on IT lives for the web platforms. Considering the number of them out there, it would have been cool to try and make something out of it.