Despite its uneven storytelling, Super Subbu deserves applause for turning India’s discomfort with sex education into an entertaining, often insightful satire, notes Sreeju Sudhakaran.
Key Points
- Mallik Ram’s Super Subbu satirises India’s societal discomfort and hypocrisy surrounding sex education, particularly in rural settings.
- The series follows Subbu, a sexually repressed man, who reluctantly becomes a sex education officer in a village hostile to the subject.
- It explores how aversion to sex education is not limited to rural areas but also present in educated urban households.
At first glance, the manner in which some characters react to the idea of sex education in Mallik Ram’s new Telugu series, Super Subbu, feels loud and excessive. Particularly in 2026. But then, if you read news reports about how parents have objected to the inclusion of the subject in the school curriculum, you would know that the satirical digs aren’t too far removed from reality.
There is a scene where the protagonist, as a teenager, is chastised for asking the teacher to teach them about reproduction, even though it was part of the syllabus, and the teacher simply refused.
I remember the topic being part of my Science curriculum in Class 12, and how my teacher droned through it with a deadpan expression, never getting into the details like he did with the other topics in Biology. Not that the sniggers of my classmates helped.
My classmates were still lucky. There are many schools where teachers completely skip the lesson, even if questions on it might appear in the exams.
This hypocritical aversion, in a country that has the largest population in the world, is exactly what Super Subbu takes aim at with its satire.
The Makhipur Saga
Makhipur is a village in Telangana whose men hate the very idea of sex education. They are proud of their virility, compete over how many children they have fathered, and see women as little more than instruments of sexual gratification.
So it is only natural to them that anyone trying to teach the villagers, particularly the women, about exercising their sexual rights is treated as an enemy, beaten up and driven away.
Makhipur is in dire need of a new sex education officer. But what happens when the next man to arrive is himself clueless about sex, having been sexually repressed since his teenage years by his tyrannical father?
Meet Subbu (Sundeep Kishan), whose life has been controlled by his nana Kukkuteshwar (Murali Sharma), who scolds him for everything, from his temporary teaching job and lack of ambition to even trying to spend intimate time with his fiancée Divya (Manasa Choudhary).
Kukkuteshwar, despite being a retired headmaster, exemplifies how the aversion towards sex education isn’t just a rural problem; it persists in educated, upper-caste urban households as well.
When Subbu’s job at a local school is at risk after an inspection goes wrong in his class, he reluctantly takes up the post of sex education officer in Makhipur without understanding the perils that await him. He, of course, informs neither his family nor Divya about the true nature of his job as he travels to the village for what is supposed to be a six-month assignment.
His arrival is met, unsurprisingly, with hostility from the male villagers, and his ‘classroom’ turns out to be nothing but an abandoned, dilapidated train bogie in the middle of nowhere, which couples use for some private time.
The place has no network coverage except for one tiny spot where you can catch a signal, and naturally, you have to pay money to access it.
Subbu does have a handy neck brace-wearing assistant, Kantha (Getup Srinu), to help him with his lessons, and he is thankfully saved from the villagers’ wrath when the district administration announces that Makhipur will receive a water tank only if Subbu completes his sex education programme.
A Farcical Approach To Storytelling
You cannot miss the vibe of TVF shows like Panchayat and Gram Chikitsalay in Super Subbu.
Just see the setting: A young urban man is transferred to a village for a job he has little interest in, struggles to adjust to rural life, and gradually warms up to the people around him, even finding love along the way.
Where Super Subbu differs is that its humour is far more farcical and loud, in keeping with Telugu cinema’s approach to comedy. The male villagers are intentionally portrayed as boorish and dim-witted, there are jokes about a character’s short stature, and a few gags are stretched longer than necessary. Those portions didn’t quite work for me.
That said, the light-hearted treatment never slips into crude or vulgar territory, even though there were plenty of opportunities for it to do so. Given the premise, there are quite a few double entendres and sexual jokes, but they rarely go below the belt.
Where The Humour Lands Well
Some of the gags genuinely land, even if they feel inspired by older films. The sequence at the district head’s office involving multiple phone calls reminded me of a similar confusion-filled scene in Khatta Meetha.
Likewise, Kukkuteshwar delivering a speech at the inauguration of a condom vending machine without realising what he is inaugurating has shades of Chatur’s speech in 3 Idiots. Even then, both scenes are funny.
The writing shows occasional flashes of engaging wit. Subbu’s first lesson on ‘No Means No’, inspired by watching Vakeel Saab, sparks a mini revolt in the village. The sequence where Subbu spends time with a sex worker (Divya Pillai) could easily have gone down the vulgar route. Remember Shankar’s Boys, which had a somewhat similar fake coming-of-age moment? Thankfully, the scene here is handled with sensitivity without sacrificing its humour.
It does, however, take the series four episodes before Subbu begins approaching sex education with the seriousness the subject deserves. The sequence where he teaches the women of the village about sanitary pads and birth control inside an enemy’s house is handled with warmth and sensitivity, and I wish the series had more moments like that.
The Writing Is Rushed In Places
Instead, everything after that feels rushed, with Subbu suddenly becoming ‘Super Subbu’ and winning over the villagers quickly enough for them to become remarkably more aware about sexual health. The villagers remain quirky enough to add to Makhipur’s eccentricity, but most of them never evolve beyond their caricatured moulds.
Subbu’s emotional and sexual awakening is handled with care, but the writing occasionally overplays it, especially when his arc veers into an alcohol-soaked emotional breakdowns.
Super Subbu also touches upon how sex education is viewed by politicians as just another government target to be ticked off, and the pressure placed on junior officers to achieve those numbers, forcing Subbu into taking some drastic measures.
What he does to hit those targets firmly places him in a moral grey area, yet the show never treats that aspect with the seriousness it deserves, only occasionally reminding us of what he did. Even then, the consequences are handled rather lightly despite the implications, with the aftermath seemingly reserved for the next season.
Too Open-Ended For Its Own Good
Oh yes, Super Subbu ends on a very open-ended note, leaving several plot threads unresolved for the next season, which is quite a bummer. Particularly because these storylines were driving much of the drama in the first season and adding to Subbu’s struggles.
The tracks that receive some sense of closure are the one involving his father, though even that leaves enough room for further exploration in Season 2, and I didn’t mind that.
Then there’s the love triangle involving his fiancée Divya and Swathi (Mithila Palkar), the crafty village belle and daughter of an evangelist who dreams of becoming a film heroine.
This track has predictability written all over it and offers little surprise, made even weaker by the fact that it doesn’t do much to explore the growing camaraderie between Subbu and Swathi. Just that there are two good looking single people in that village, who occasionally interact, and therefore has to fall in love, while the fiancée moves away from him emotionally.
The Performances
As for the performances, Sundeep Kishan is good at depicting the title character’s gradual progression from a fairly weak-willed man into someone far more confident by the end.
Mithila Palkar is equally charming as the cherubic Swathi, particularly shining in the audition sequence.
Murali Sharma lends convincing rigidity to Kukkuteshwar without going over the top, while also adding some welcome humour to the character. His scenes with his brother-in-law, played by Sampoornesh Babu, have a nice comic rhythm, particularly when the family visits Makhipur to surprise Subbu.
Getup Srinu also gets ample opportunities to shine as Subbu’s loyal sidekick. The rest of the supporting cast, including Brahmanandam, Divya Pillai and Kanika Mann, perform their parts well.
For all its uneven writing and rushed final stretch, Super Subbu is at least tackling a pertinent subject without making a mockery of it. If the next season matches its social intent with sharper storytelling, this could become something genuinely special for Telugu OTT space.
Super Subbu is streaming on Netflix.
