Member Reviews

A significant addition to the small canon of Indian media industry dramas, Crime Beat, like Scoop before it, is based on a book written by a journalist who was in the thick of the action that forms the core of the series. Even its fictional elements largely flow from fact. The Zee5 series is marked by realism, an attribute that stems from its abjuration of overt generic flourishes. The dialogues co-written by the author of the novel (The Price You Pay, published in 2013)—scribe-turned academic Somnath Batabyal—contribute conversational authenticity to the show. Crime Beat investigates the Delhi underworld, the media’s attritional brushes with it and with men in uniform charged with keeping crime in check in the city. The lines that separate the three domains from each other as well as from party politics are frequently blurred, even erased.

A marriage annulled returns to haunt a man all set to move on in life in the lovey-dovey company of another woman. Love quickly flies out the window when the ex-wife, with a massive axe to grind, decides to do everything in her power to queer the pitch and picks up cudgels against the bride-to-be. Isn’t that the stuff that zany rom-coms are usually made of? Yes, but only in an ideal world. Mere Husband Ki Biwi, caught in a yawning gap between intent and execution, gropes in the dark for inspiration and fresh ideas and finds none worth a mention. The breakup has left a sorry trail of bitterness and the new hookup is riddled with challenges created by the man’s messy past. That is an obvious boilerplate for a cocktail of emotional bedlam, romantic recriminations, and much triangular to-ing and fro-ing. It’s all sufficiently flighty and frothy and yet painfully tedious. To biwi or not to biwi? That is the question the film runs concentric circles around and does not formulate a convincing answer.

If one is good only because of the fear of repercussions, are they really good people? If one is disillusioned with the idea of being perfect, wants to live life on the fly, make mistakes and amends along the way, are they really bad people? Now, with most questions regarding the existential crisis of being a good person in a seemingly bad world, these also don’t have concrete answers. Director Ashwath Marimuthu attempts to tell a story of a guy who descends into the depths of depravity only to find the shortest of ropes to hold on and crawl back to redemption. A guy named D Ragavan aka Dragon.

A line from the Tom Cruise starrer A Few Good Men (1992) would be very apt for Surface Season 2. Maybe Jack Nicholson should have shouted, “You can’t handle the truth,” to some of the characters in the show. The Apple TV+ series starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw revolves around a woman named Sophie trying to figure out her past, present, and future after getting amnesia. This season, Surface moves to England, where buried secrets threaten to take over two families. Sophie (Mbatha-Raw), now going by the name Tess, returns to London, where she tracks individuals who were once close to her, hoping to find out the truth about her past. But as the identities of Sophie and Tess continue to co-mingle, she puts herself and others she comes in contact with in more danger. This involves a journalist named Callum (Gavin Drea) and her estranged husband James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) as they interact with the secretive but wealthy Huntley family and their heirs Quinn (Phil Dunster) and Eliza (Millie Brady).

Ankur Chaddha (Arjun Kapoor) has nightmares about ex-wife Prableen (Bhumi Pednekar), long after they’ve been divorced. Closing a real estate deal for his dad (Shakti Kapoor) in picturesque Rishikesh, Ankur bumps into the glamorous Antara Khanna (Rakul Preet Singh) who was out of reach for him in their college days. She is rich, swings between teaching handgliding and practising sports physiotherapy, and she’s single. He goes into flashbacks to tell her (and the audience) what happened with the bhootni incarnate in his nightmares. Antara and Prableen have history too, flashing back to college days, to friction in a queue to pick up a form. Memories of the taunts at Antara’s leg-revealing shorts and her retorts to Prableen, haven’t faded with time. A second jab at happiness beckons when romance blooms. Ankur even overcomes his fear of heights to propose to Antara dramatically, dropping from a parachute in front of a mall. But Prableen with her menacing “Baby, Baby” has returned, her memory conveniently blanking out their divorce.

You’ve seen Broken News. You know how rival channels work, ethics versus TRPs. You’ve seen Dhamaka and newsroom ambitions that prevail over national security. You’ve seen Despatch, the print medium giving way to digital. You’ve also seen umpteen movies and shows centred around a dreaded criminal, cops, journalists and politicians. You know that cops on the take, on the payroll of businessmen, ministers and opposition leaders, contribute to regular cinematic fodder. The show begins with someone with a huge following stepping out. Binny Chaudhry has surrendered, scream assorted TV anchors. And Binny is shot. The rest is a flashback to return to this moment at the end. Sudhir Mishra who takes the credit as showrunner and director (along with Sanjeev Kaul), picks up a book titled The Price You Pay and proceeds to build Binny Chaudhry (Rahul Bhat) as an uncatchable criminal with hawala rackets, kidnappings and ransom money that he showers like confetti over Indirapuram, the place he grew up in Delhi.

Some movies break your heart when they’re not good. A chunk of filmmaker-activist Sridhar Rangayan’s filmography — which focuses on queer subjects and LGBTQ-themed stories — falls into this category. The chasm between intent and execution is as wide as the chasm between fact and fiction in Hindi historical biopics. Distinguishing between the two is important; criticising the craft of a film is not the same as panning its cause. If social significance alone were a yardstick for meaningful cinema, Rangayan’s latest (co-directed and co-written with Saagar Gupta), Kuch Sapney Apne, would be the Love Actually of the genre. A sequel to his previous feature, Evening Shadows (2018), Kuch Sapney Apne expands its multi-narrative snapshot of an orthodox South Indian family at the crossroads. The conflict is now married to its consequences.

Mere Husband Ki Biwi is such a generic and run-of-the-mill North Indian production that if it were edible, it’d be a half-crispy aloo paratha for breakfast. If it were a person, it’d be Rocky Randhawa (without the self-awareness) from Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani. If it were an emotion, it’d be the entitled rage of drivers at the Delhi-Gurgaon toll plaza. If it were a place, it’d be a breezy mustard field — but only as a painting in an upscale art gallery. I can go on, but you get the gist. It looks like every other entry in the genre: glossy, distant, intermittently alive but ultimately soulless. At least it’s environmentally conscious, because it recycles a whole book of tropes: the wise-ass best friend played by a comedian; a lustful Shakti Kapoor character; a quirky voice-over starting the film but disappearing after the introduction; an Amritsari girl who addresses her husband by either his surname, yaar, baby or baby yaar; a love triangle between a Chaddha, a Dhillon and a Khanna where two of them spend an entire half secretly competing with each other for the ‘prize’; a dozen slow-mo shots of them walking towards, past or away from each other with contempt and pride; an overseas almost-wedding; and so on and so (un)forth.

Fortunately, the worst thing about Oops! Ab Kya? is its title. The eight-episode series is an Indian remake of Jane the Virgin, the hit American dramedy centered on the life of a chaste Latina virgin who becomes pregnant after a routine hospital visit turns into an artificial insemination accident. Oops! Ab Kya? (if I repeat this title enough, maybe it’ll stop sounding terrible) is a serviceable show on its own. It has a decent cast: Shweta Basu Prasad finally gets an author-backed role of sorts, while the supporting gang is gamely led by veterans like Sonali Kulkarni and Jaaved Jaaferi. The young-and-awkward Dice Media aesthetic lends itself naturally to the show’s unserious tone. For once, the artifice and DIY stagey-ness of its setting aren’t deal breakers. And it helps that the original show aims beyond its one-line gimmick: every character becomes a protagonist of their own little storyline. There’s not much to tell the main dish from the garnish.