📼 Is the old Ramayan serial still better than the new ones

Last week my nephew asked about the Ramayan serial I keep going on about, so we watched a new version. He's 11 and he sat through 3 episodes without touching his phone, which is rare for him. The sets are huge and the costumes shine. The old one could never have afforded any of this. I'll admit the new one looks better on a big screen. I'm just not sure it feels better. After he went to bed, I put on 2 episodes of the old serial on my laptop. The scenes move slower and the sets look a bit like cardboard in some places. But the actors look at each other for a long time before they say anything. Those pauses made me sit very still, a grown adult with a cup of tea going cold. Next morning I asked my nephew which one he liked better. He thought about it properly. He said the new one is faster and prettier. The old one is slower, but the people look like they mean it. I didn't expect that from an 11 year old. I didn't tell him I wrote it down. He also asked why the old one had such long speeches. I had no good answer. I know nostalgia is part of it. I remember streets going quiet when it aired. Our neighbours would sit together in 1 room and nobody went out until it ended. That memory probably makes me soft on the old one. Still, that sincerity is hard to buy with money. Does anyone else lean this way, or is it only the memories talking? Be honest with me.

My mother still cries at the same scene in the old one, every single rewatch. She calls the newer version a film instead of a serial, and she means both the good and the bad. I like both, to be fair, but I only ever rewatch the old one on a weekend afternoon. Maybe that says something. Or maybe I'm just a person who likes slow and a bit of cardboard.

My grandmother refuses to watch any newer version, says the original cast simply understood the material differently, not necessarily better acting, just a different kind of sincerity that apparently does not translate the same way onto a newer production regardless of budget. She has tried exactly twice with newer adaptations and switched it off both times within the first ten minutes.