Zee’s Iconic TV Shows Enter the Microdrama Era: Agent Raghav, Fear Files and Santoshi Maa Reimagined for Mobile

Some of Zee’s familiar television properties are getting a radically different format.

Through a content partnership between Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. and Story TV, shows including Agent Raghav: Crime Branch, Fear Files, Santoshi Maa and Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Hi Kijo are being adapted into short-form microdramas designed specifically for smartphone viewing. The collaboration was announced in February 2026 and represents an attempt to take established television IP into a faster, vertical, mobile-first format.

The shift is significant because these are not new concepts created exclusively for short-video platforms. They come from a television ecosystem where episodes traditionally ran for considerably longer and characters were developed over extended story arcs.

Now, the same storytelling properties are being compressed into bite-sized episodes.

What is a microdrama?

Microdramas are short, vertically presented fictional episodes designed primarily for smartphone consumption.

Story TV has been developing this format at considerable scale. A post from a Story TV creative-production executive described episodes averaging around 1 minute 50 seconds, while also noting that the format relies heavily on establishing a dramatic hook very early in an episode.

That approach is fundamentally different from conventional television.

A traditional serial can spend several minutes establishing a character, location or emotional situation. Microdrama has much less time to achieve the same objective. The opening moments therefore become crucial.

For older television properties, this creates an interesting creative challenge: how do you preserve the identity of a familiar show while restructuring its storytelling for an audience accustomed to scrolling?

Why Agent Raghav, Fear Files and Santoshi Maa?

The titles involved cover very different genres.

Agent Raghav: Crime Branch belongs to the crime-investigation space, while Fear Files is associated with horror and supernatural storytelling. Santoshi Maa represents devotional and spiritual drama, and Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Hi Kijo belongs to the family-drama tradition.

That variety gives Story TV the opportunity to test whether different kinds of television narratives can work within the same short-form structure.

The partnership also reportedly includes recognisable performers associated with the original television properties, including names such as Shweta Tiwari, Ratan Rajput and Sharad Kelkar in the catalogue.

The biggest change is not the stories- it is the format

The more interesting part of this development is the change in viewing behaviour.

Television was built around scheduled viewing. A viewer generally had to be in front of a television at a particular time to follow a serial.

Microdramas reverse that relationship.

The viewer opens a phone, watches vertically framed content and can consume an episode in roughly the time it takes to watch a short social-media video.

Story TV's own executives have described the company's approach as bringing serialised storytelling and daily episodic drops to smartphones.

This means the television serial is effectively being redesigned for a world where attention is measured in seconds rather than minutes.

Can iconic TV storytelling survive in 90 seconds?

This is where the experiment becomes particularly interesting.

The strength of many Indian television shows has traditionally come from gradual character development, relationships, recurring conflicts and emotional continuity.

A 90-second or two-minute format cannot reproduce all of that in the same way.

Instead, the storytelling has to become more concentrated.

A Story TV creative-production post discussing its microdrama workflow noted that the format rewards immediate confrontation, emotional hooks and a rapid movement through the story.

For a crime show, that could mean opening directly with a mystery.

For horror, it could mean getting to the unsettling incident almost immediately.

For a family drama, the emotional conflict may need to appear within the opening moments rather than being gradually established.

That makes adaptation more complicated than simply cutting a traditional television episode into smaller pieces.

Zee is also testing the value of its existing IP

There is a business dimension to the experiment as well.

Zee owns a large catalogue of television properties that already have recognition among Indian audiences. Repurposing those properties for new formats allows established characters and concepts to potentially reach viewers who may never have watched the original television broadcasts.

Fortune India described the partnership as part of a broader effort to monetise legacy television IP through vertical, short-form storytelling.

This is particularly relevant as entertainment consumption becomes increasingly mobile-first.

Rather than treating television and short-form video as completely separate ecosystems, the collaboration attempts to connect the two.

Story TV's larger microdrama strategy

The Zee partnership is not an isolated experiment for Story TV.

The platform has been building a sizeable microdrama catalogue, with company representatives publicly describing a library of more than 1,000 shows and a user base running into several crores.

The company's subsequent content strategy has also expanded into different storytelling formats, including what it calls Story TV Dailies, aimed at bringing serialised daily storytelling to mobile screens.

The company's development of The Bose Network, described by its team as an AI-hybrid production, also indicates that Story TV is experimenting not only with episode length but with production technology and storytelling scale.

The Celebrity Hour Take

The Zee-Story TV partnership is interesting because it is not simply another OTT adaptation.

It represents a collision between old-school Indian television storytelling and the consumption habits of the smartphone generation.

Shows such as Agent Raghav, Fear Files and Santoshi Maa were originally created for viewers who were willing to spend considerably more time with an episode. Their new versions have to compete in an environment where a viewer can swipe away from a story almost instantly.

That could force writers to rethink how television stories are structured.

The real test, therefore, is not whether a familiar title can be squeezed into 90 seconds. It is whether the emotional identity of a long-form television story can survive when its storytelling language is completely redesigned for the phone.

If successful, this model could give older television IP another route to younger audiences. But the creative challenge remains substantial: speed cannot automatically replace character development, atmosphere or narrative depth.

For Zee, the experiment offers a way to extend the life of its television catalogue. For Story TV, it provides established intellectual properties with which to build its microdrama ecosystem.

And for viewers, it raises a simple question: Can a story that once occupied an entire television episode now hold your attention for just 90 seconds?

Sources & Verification

This article was prepared using the supplied Bollywood Hungama story lead and independently cross-checked against reporting on the Zee Entertainment–Story TV partnership, as well as publicly available statements from Story TV representatives. The partnership and listed Zee titles are supported by multiple secondary sources, while Story TV's own publicly available posts provide additional context on its microdrama format and production approach.

The article distinguishes between the reported partnership and editorial analysis of what the format could mean for television storytelling.