Super Subbu Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
A reluctant teacher, a conservative village, and plenty of awkward conversations make this Netflix series both funny and surprisingly heartfelt. Sundeep Kishan and Mithila Palkar bring charm to a series that tackles one of India’s most uncomfortable topics with humor and empathy.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Director: Mallik Ram
Platform: Netflix
Episodes: 7
Cast: Sundeep Kishan, Mithila Palkar, Murali Sharma, Getup Srinu, Brahmanandam
Language: Telugu
India has a complicated relationship with sex education.
It appears briefly in school textbooks, gets rushed through by red-faced teachers, and quietly disappears from the conversation before anyone has actually learned anything. Super Subbu, Netflix’s first Telugu original series, is built entirely around that discomfort — and for much of its seven-episode run, it handles it with genuine warmth and surprising wit.
The story is set in Maakipur, a fictional village in Telangana with one of the highest birth rates in the country. Nobody in the village wants to talk about why. Then Subramanyam Chillukuri Rao — Subbu — arrives. He is a city-raised young man with no meaningful experience in the subject he has been hired to teach, appointed as the village’s Sex Education Officer in a job nobody else would take. His father, played by Murali Sharma, is a strict traditional schoolteacher who has no idea what his son is actually doing for work. Subbu must educate the village, hold down the job, and keep the entire situation hidden from the one person most likely to disown him for it.
It is a very good setup.
Sundeep Kishan is the right person for this role. His Subbu is not a fool — he is a fundamentally decent man dropped into a situation that is well beyond his experience, and the show is careful to protect that distinction. You keep rooting for him even when the comedy is at his expense. Mithila Palkar, playing an aspiring actress and influencer stuck in a place too small for her ambitions, brings her usual naturalistic ease to the role. She and Kishan have a comfortable, unforced chemistry that makes their scenes together genuinely enjoyable.
Murali Sharma as the domineering father is the show’s most interesting character.
He is not played as a pure villain but as a very specific kind of traditional rigidity — the kind many viewers will recognise from their own families. The fear Subbu has of him feels completely real, and the father-son relationship is the show’s most emotionally loaded thread.
The comedy works well, particularly when Subbu’s complete lack of qualification collides with the village’s collective refusal to engage. The episode dealing with consent is especially sharp — funny but also genuinely uncomfortable in the ways it is supposed to be. The supporting cast of Telugu comedy veterans gives the show a confidence that elevates the material.
The problems begin in the second half.
The show opens more doors than it closes. The father-son relationship, which feels like it is building toward something emotionally significant, never resolves in a way that feels earned. The question of whether Maakipur actually changes — whether the work Subbu does over seven episodes makes a real difference — is left frustratingly open. The season ends on a cliffhanger that feels less like deliberate storytelling and more like the show simply ran out of episodes before it ran out of story.
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Some subplots are introduced and then quietly abandoned. One particularly eventful episode ends on a dramatic note, and the very next episode opens with no reference to what just happened. It is the kind of continuity lapse that pulls you out of an otherwise engaging series.
Super Subbu is still worth watching. It tackles a subject Indian television rarely touches, does it with genuine warmth, and has a cast that clearly believes in the material.
It just needed a few more episodes — or a sharper edit — to deliver the ending this story deserves.
Super Subbu is now streaming on Netflix. All 7 episodes available. Language: Telugu.