Whodunnit thrillers are always the flavour of season provided they are well done!
Worldwide popularity of edge-of-the-seat murder mysteries and thrillers have led to the production of a plethora of such content including a few stellar Indian cop universe series like Dahaad, Delhi Crime, Daldal, Search: The Naina Murder Case, Kohrra 2 and Aranyak among them. All of these are spearheaded by female actors. Not to be left behind in the race, Karisma Kapoor too debuted as an investigating cop in the series Brown that released a couple of days ago on Zee5.
Directed bu Abhinay Deo, this seven-part series starring Karisma, Jisshu Sengupta, Aryann Bhowmik, Surya Sharma, Soni Razdan, Meghna Malik Paresh Pahuja, Pamela Bhutoria and Helen among others, sees Karisma chasing a psycho serial killer.
Here's what worked and what did not for the series:
Each of the actors delivered a very fine and believable act. Karisma looked every inch her part: a tired, cynical Anglo-Indian cop, who stays with her mother (played perfectly by Soni Razdan). She is coping with her personal relationship crisis and suffers from alcoholism. Not only Karisma excelled in her part, with no-makeup look and deglam costumes and hair, she also proved once again, that the 90s mainstream cinema gave actresses almost no scope to display their histrionics beyond the routine song and dance scenes. We wish to see Karisma in more meaningful roles now.
Surya Sharma is a revelation as Arjun, the supporting and feeling police man. It's difficult to believe that the abominably violent and hotheaded "Rinku Paji" from the series Undekhi can be cast as a a soft-hearted and accommodating police officer with a heart. Aryan is a discovery in his short and complicated character, though we hoped to see his backstory. Jisshu Sengupta, who plays the antagonist, steals the show with his expressive eyes and silence. But the casting agencies also need to come out of typecasting him just because he did a few negative roles in Hindi and the South industries.
We also wish Pamela Bhutoria and Meghna Malik are seen more in OTT contents. With such gorgeous faces coupled with acting chops, they are such a waste in the small roles.
Even Kharaj Mukherjee and Arijit Dutta stood out in supporting roles for their impressive actings.
Every female cop, rather every other cop need not have a dark past or struggling present.
That's another problem that the "playsafe" writers suffer from. Whether Kareena Kapoor Khan in the The Buckingham Murders, Mona Singh in Kohrra 2, Sonakshi Sinha in Dahaad, Bhumi S Pednekar in Daldal, or Raveena Tandon in Aranyak, all of them have a dark , traumatic past and an ongoing struggle. Nothing can be further than truth and what these writers fail to appreciate is that the audience gets bored with the same character outlines. Cops can have a normal and happy life as those in any other professions. Period.
The plot and screenplay could have been way better. The storyline is half-baked and characters demanded back stories. Karisma's past was shown in such a hotchpotch and sketchy manner we couldn't properly understand what actually happened to her. It failed to relate the audience to her character Rita Brown. Same with Jisshu's character. We would have definitely been satisfied with an explainer as to why he became what he became. The only well-etched out backstory was that of Surya Sharma's.
The narrative also failed to hold the suspense beyond the fifth episode and there were too many loose ends, loopholes and questions that remained unanswered.
To all the non-Bengali content creators -- we don't sing Rabindrasangeet at the drop of a hat. No, we do not express our emotions through Tagore alone. That's a shallow and shoddy research job. Also there is NO Bengali word called Sashmit and it really sounded weird each time they called a character Sashmit Bagchi. Would have been credible he was called Sushmit.
Also the real rich and mighty in Kolkata do not live in Joka, they inhabit the posh localities like Alipore, Ballygunge Circular Road, Queens Park among other addresses. Kindly do better research next time.
The way Kolkata's Anglo-Indian community has been portrayed, reflects a weak background study of the city and its minority population too.
If you really want to watch Brown, watch it for the actors. All of the cast gave more than their 100 per cent to pull off the show.
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