RD Recommends: Spider-Noir, Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa and More

From long-awaited returns to buzzy new releases, the world of entertainment is overflowing—in the best way. Your watchlist is growing, your TBR pile is teetering, and there's more to choose from than ever. Consider this list your quick, curated guide to what's worth your time right now.

Spider-Noir

Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Showrunners: Oren Uziel, Steve Lightfoot

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Li Jun Li

One of the most popular Spider-Man variants introduced in the hit animated film Into the Spider-Verse (2018) was Spider-Noir, a black-and-white Spidey dwelling in a noir version of 1930s New York, voiced by Nicolas Cage. The character and Cage’s voice role drew such praise that Amazon decided to develop a live-action solo series using this character. Ben Reilly (Cage) is an older, beaten-down version of Spider-Man who is now working as a private investigator, decades after a personal tragedy forced him to stop his vigilante activities. Li Jun Li, fresh off her superlative performance in the Oscar-winning Sinners (2025), plays Cat Hardy, a nightclub singer and femme fatale whose paths cross with Reilly’s.

Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa

Now streaming on Zee5

Directed by: Rajat Kapoor

Starring: Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, Rajat Kapoor

The prolific and versatile actor–director Rajat Kapoor’s underrated 2020 film Kadakh was a classic closed-room mystery with a twist—it wasn’t a whodunit because the revelation happens in the film’s first scene. Instead, the narrative hook for the story was, ‘Will they get away with it?’, and somehow, it worked like a charm. Kapoor returns with Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa, a more conventional, Agatha-Christie-flavoured whodunit. Kapoor himself stars as Chandra, a cautious man whose business partner Sohrab Handa (Vinay Pathak) is a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered man who has clashed with many people in the past. Therefore, when Handa’s body is discovered at Chandra’s mansion-in-the-hills, just about everybody is a suspect and the clock is ticking.

AURA by Diljit Dosanjh

This April, Diljit Dosanjh, one of the best-known Indian artistes on the planet, performed his song ‘Morni’ on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. It was a characteristically high-energy performance from the Punjabi singer-actor, promoting the concert tour for his latest album AURA. Like his previous albums, AURA sees Dosanjh playing it safe until the very end. It opens with ‘Senorita’ and ‘Kufar’, two easy-listening, radio-friendly tracks set to standard hip-hop beats. ‘Kufar’ will remind Dosanjh fans of ‘Kinni Kinni’ (2023), one of his better efforts in recent years and a reels sensation. ‘Gunda’, however, sees Dosanjh hitting the high notes in commanding fashion. Lyrically too, it is the most complete track on the album, which sees the superstar interrogating his own roots and his career trajectory thus far. The album ends with a pair of experiments: the rousing ‘God Bless’ and the almost lo-fi down-tempo track ‘Broken Soul’ that sounds like Dosanjh is recording for MTV Unplugged. In the final equation, AURA sees Dosanjh venturing out of his comfort zone every now and then.... while making sure that his hardcore fans are given exactly what they want. 

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe (Pan Macmillan India)

In 2019, a London teenager named Zac Brettler jumped to his death from a riverside apartment balcony into the Thames. At the time of his death, Brettler was in the flat with two others: a gangster and a cryptocurrency trader. In the weeks and months following his death, Brettler’s parents realized their son was leading a double life— he had been posing as the son of a Russian oligarch and meeting shady characters in that persona. New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe came upon this story through a friend, and soon he began unravelling its unseen layers—going back to Brettler’s grandfather arriving in the UK as a Holocaust survivor. London Falling begins life as a riveting true crime tale, but ends up being a grim sociological portrait of 21st-century London, a gilded city with obscene, unconscionable levels of inequality.

Register Me As Kulbhushan by Alka Saraogi, translated by John Vater (Penguin Random House India)

In the early 2000s, Alka Saraogi shot onto the Hindi literary scene with her novel Kali-Katha Via Bypass, for which she won the Sahitya Akademi Award. Throughout her ouevre, she has documented the lives of Marwari families in Kolkata. In her latest novel-in translation Register Me as Kulbhushan, she examines the very timely themes of migration, identity and assimilation. The protagonist of this novel is an East Pakistani man of Marwari lineage who goes by many names, but ultimately settles on Kulbhushan. Through his amnesia-friendly “button for forgetting” he tries not to dwell on the past, but echoes of 1971 still reverberate through his life.

50 Stories by Paul Zacharia (Aleph)

The 80-year-old Malayalam novelist and short story writer Paul Zacharia is widely considered one of the pre-eminent chroniclers of life in Kerala. In his memorable novel A Secret History of Compassion, he blended newspaper headlines, magical realism to present a layered satire based on Kerala politics. 50 Stories brings together the best short fiction from Zacharia’s oeuvre and this collection sees him at his unpredictable best. In one of the stories, Jesus Christ suddenly feels the urge to shave his face, and via a specific barber. In another, a man is haunted by thoughts that come to him from a literal black hole. And in true Zacharia fashion, a comically corrupt blood bank becomes a happy hunting ground for the oldest vampire of them all.

The Good Reporter: A Memoir of Journalism in the 21st Century by Disha Mullick, Geeta Devi and others (Simon & Schuster India)

Khabar Lahariya began life in 2002 as a local newspaper in Uttar Pradesh, started by a group of determined women fighting numerous obstacles (financial, logistical etc.). Down the years, this unique organization has accomplished some very fine reporting, winning the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Women in Journalism and the Courage in Journalism prize, among many others. Clearly, this is a unique Indian success story. Written by a group of 10 female journalists, The Good Reporter is a brief history of how the organization came to be, the challenges they continue to face, and the price of doing good, honest journalism in this country.

The Insight Edge With Sanjay Manjrekar

Streaming on YouTube

With the T20 format getting more aggressive and ruthless with each passing year, the role of data analysis in cricket is also increasing. The Insight Edge is a new cricket podcast where host Shachi Pai sits down with former Team India batter and current commentator Sanjay Manjrekar. They go over the week’s games and memorable on-field moments, tactically important developments etc. Each episode also has a few minutes where Pai and Manjrekar riff on random stuff—like, did you know for example, that Manjrekar is now a trained Rabindra Sangeet practitioner and has actually released a few Rabindra Sangeet albums?

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Streaming on YouTube

In May 2021, noted progressive journalist Krystal Ball and her conservative colleague Saagar Enjeti were hosting the political web-series Rising with Krystal and Saagar for The Hill, an established American political outlet. However, they were frustrated with what they described as the pressures of working in a corporate bureaucracy—there were clearly defined limits on what they could and could not say, who they could or could not criticise. In June that year, Ball and Enjeti started the Breaking Points podcast, and in just four months, it has become one of the fastest growing podcasts in the United States, with over two million subscribers on YouTube as of April 2026. The show’s USP is a conservative and a progressive bringing you news and analysis in a bipartisan, anti-establishment way with zero corporate sponsors. Their coverage of the 2026 Iran-US-Israel war has been top-notch, featuring Professor Robert Pape, noted geopolitics expert and author of the widely-read blog The Escalation Trap.

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