Feluda is back—again. This time on Hoichoi. Byomkesh, of course, never really left. And so, the great Bengali tradition of recycling our two favorite detectives continues. At this point, we might as well establish a fixed annual release calendar—Durga Puja, Christmas, Poila Boishakh, and New Feluda or Byomkesh Incoming.

It’s almost a rite of passage now. Every few months, a new actor throws on the oversized glasses, someone else adopts the dhoti-kurta combo, and another director steps up, convinced that this will be the definitive version. The posters drop, the gongs sound, and another iteration of our Bong Pinkertons is unveiled—looking suspiciously similar to the previous one. Because if nothing else, they always get the looks right. Well, most of them do.

Now, as faithful Bongs, we have a childlike excitement for the prospect of sinking our teeth into a meaty, nail-biting mystery—rife with all the beloved tropes of crime thrillers. Nothing quite sets us off like watching our childhood heroes from well-thumbed books come to life on screen, deciphering clues and outsmarting villains.

And boy, have we been blessed—courtesy of Tolly nobility, where everyone seems to want a piece of the pie. Actors gaze into the camera with exaggerated intensity, speaking in measured, sermon-like tones as if revealing the secrets of the universe. Directors attempt to carve out their place in this well-worn terrain, elevating the hero to godlike status while etching the sidekicks with a near doglike devotion. And producers? Well, they deftly tap into the Bengali soft spot, rolling out a steady stream of near-identical films, each dutifully following the holy blueprint of massy crime thrillers.

Across this endless spectrum, two characters have been revived the most—Feluda and Byomkesh. The latter, in particular, has seen so many reinventions at the hands of seasoned auteurs that one could reasonably expect a Byomkesh in the Bakshi-verse crossover any day now.

Ray’s hero-centric take couldn’t quite escape the looming stardom of Uttam Kumar—an undeniable screen presence, yet perhaps too grand for a detective known for his grounded, no-frills approach. This contrast was never more glaring than in the infamous Japanese disguise fiasco—Byomkesh, a man with a known disdain for theatrics, casually slipping into the very artifice he detested. Then came Anjan Dutt’s adaptation, which started with promise but gradually lost its spark—partly due to its revolving-door cast, leading to an identity crisis and a growing disconnect with fans. Debaloy’s nonagenarian Byomkesh and Dibakar Banerjee’s Byomkesh-on-acid looked intriguing on paper but materialized into very little on screen. Such is the enduring allure of Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s creation that even Rituparno Ghosh couldn’t resist biting into the forbidden fruit. And so, tucked within his otherwise glorious repertoire sits yet another take on this truth-seeker’s triumphs, starring a rather eclectic cast (both directors included).

Most of these adaptations, however, fall into two broad categories:

1. The purists, too rigid to rise above the set framework, afraid to color outside the lines.

2. The reinventors, too blinded by their own ambition, drowning the simplicity of the character in elaborate, over-the-top storytelling.

But amidst this rigmarole of tardy adaptations, there is one man who managed to crack the case—Basu Chatterjee. The middle-of-the-road showman, the man who took Byomkesh beyond the Bong bubble and made him a household name, striking a rare balance between these two extremes.

Now, I’m not a ’90s kid, and my nostalgia for “simpler times” might be dismissed as phony—especially coming from someone raised in an era drowning in content. But still, I find myself drawn to Chatterjee’s middle-class, down-to-earth, homely detective—the kind who doesn’t need theatrics to prove his worth.

His Byomkesh Bakshi (1993) was everything that the character was meant to be—subtle yet sharp, intelligent without being self-indulgent, a detective who solved crimes without turning into a mystical, sermonizing Sherlock-in-a-dhoti. Unlike the grandiose, larger-than-life versions that often overshadowed the essence of the character, Chatterjee’s Byomkesh was wonderfully restrained. Rajit Kapur’s performance became the gold standard—a Byomkesh with depth, not just brooding stares and dramatic monologues.

And it wasn’t just the lead. Unlike other adaptations that reduce Ajit to a glorified stenographer, Chatterjee gave him a solid footing—Ajit as a genuine companion, not just an audience surrogate for exposition dumps. The mysteries, too, weren’t just props for the hero to flex his brilliance; they had weight, atmosphere, and an unhurried charm that made them timeless.

Maybe it’s my privilege of living in an era of content oversaturation that makes me yearn for something simpler, or maybe it’s my misplaced nostalgia for Doordarshan reruns, but Basu Chatterjee’s Byomkesh remains unmatched. It didn’t try to impress with stylized excess or grand reinventions; it simply focused on good storytelling, sharp writing, and a detective who felt like a real person rather than a demi-god in a trench coat.

And perhaps that’s the greatest mystery no one else has managed to solve—how something so simple could still be the most compelling.