Series Review: The Perfect Couple on Netflix

Note to self

1. If you like short stories, do NOT read novels. You owe your time more respect than that.

2. Unless you love Nicole Kidman or Ishaan Khattar, understand the concept of "cut your losses". The plot is available on imdb. Don't waste time.

This is not a series. This is a pendulum whose only job is to swing - from here to there, there to here.. and so on.

Don't bother counting the plotholes. They are there to make BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) feel good about themselves.

This isn't a murder mystery (I mean, it is, but in the same way that stretched chewing gum is praline), it isn't a soap opera (but it tries really hard), and it definitely makes no sense.

It's a limited series. Which means it might vanish from Netflix sometime soon. And thank god for that!!

Series Review: Unforgotten

 

It is not possible to do an unbiased review of the 6-episode series. (Season 1)

The entire series is based on Nicola Walker's belief in the human-ness of a skeleton that is found in a basement. She wants to bring justice to the family of the victim, and to the person that this victim was. One cannot remain untouched by that much humanity in one person. The dogged pursuit of justice, not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of the person - this difference in focus is very, very important. Most of the cold case series and films are based on a policeperson's need to "restore justice". This one is not. And therefore, that aspect of the storytelling must necessarily colour the rest of my review - positively. 

The screenplay is adequate. I am a sucker for great writing and great dialogues. While the series is very well written, the brilliant dialogues are conspicuous by their absence. 

My other grouse with the series is how uniform the characters are - even their visuals. They come from very diverse socio-economic segments, yet one cannot even tell them apart from dress and hairstyles! 

Their emotions follow a template, almost. There is no diversity. After a while, the mishmash becomes so weird you can't tell the characters apart. You can't think, "Oh, Philip would do this." or "That's not like Robert." 

The lighting would have to take the third brickbat. The series is dark as it is, some great cinematography would not kill the makers. In fact, it is almost criminal to have great locations and then show them in such poor light - literally and metaphorically.

Having done the brickbats, one must now come to the bouquets. The editing should take a bow. It is not easy to stretch a single crime across 6 episodes, spanning multiple threads, and still keeping the reader engaged (with no help from costumes, writers, cinematographers, music directors, and the like). The editor and the writer have achieved this feat. The storytelling is taut and every scene matters. It adds to the plot in some way. 

The multiple plots are woven together - not brilliantly, but well enough. Some things are unclear to the viewer till the end, but that's ok.  If a viewer were to die at the end of this series, it would be out of boredom, not curiosity. 

If I were to do this my way, I would completely remove some of the sub plots (Philip and Beth, for instance), focus on the 2-3 main players and their families, draw out the individuality of these characters, give some of them that great British sense of humour, and make the series at least two episodes shorter. 

Should you watch this? 

For the superlative acting by Nicola Walker and Frances Tomelty (she plays Maureen). If you generally like dark suspense kind of content. Sure. Do watch.

TV review: Ancient Apocalypse

 This is a docuseries.

If history is your thing, you already know that there are many megalithic architectural structures for which historians have no explanation.

If history is not your thing, you have at least heard of the pyramids in Egypt.

This docuseries does one thing brilliantly - it brings all those disparate, scattered pieces of evidence together and ties them up in a timeline that is credible.

The reason historians have been able to sidestep the questions raised by these megaliths is that the questions were asked one at a time - What about the Chichen Itza? What about the Nazca lines? What about the pyramids? But when you put ALL the data points on the table and ask ALL the questions together, they become very uncomfortable questions to avoid.

What it does not do so well is subtlety and sticking to the core of facts above analysis. Each data point is coated with some hypotheses and at some places, data points appear to be force-fitted to suit the hypothesis.

The other thing it does not do well is providing exhaustive information. The Denisovas, which, imho, form a very important piece of the puzzle, are entirely left out. The Nazca lines are untouched even though they are one of the best researched unexplained archeological features. I will not list the smaller data points that are omitted - we can chalk those down to time constraints. These are the two glaring misses in content.

If you are a history person, this docuseries will leave you with some additional, relevant information, and a slight discomfort with the pushiness of the host. The hypothesis is probable - at most. One might want to pursue it, but one is equally likely to file it as one of the many hypotheses already shared by those who care.

If you are not a history person, the series will truly open your eyes to a LOT of new information. What to do with that information, is entirely up to you.

Like all well-funded docuseries, it is well made, well-shot, well-edited. The technicals are all in place.

Film Review: Magic Beyond Words

 This is an unauthorised biography, as per the declaration at the start of the movie.

But this is very good storytelling. At a very taut 90 minutes, the movie is a delight.

Poppy Montgomery gives a performance that should be remembered for some time.

The editing is the first thing that deserves a special mention. Not one wasted scene.

The second thing is the screenplay. It's funny and intelligent and engaging.

The third thing is the acting - by every single person on that screen. The casting was perfect, and every actor delivered.

The lighting is great.

Review: Dr. Arora on Sony Liv

Dr. Vishesh Arora is the world's cutest stalker, but he is a stalker.

Given that the trailer set high expectations, and one was actually waiting for this to release on the 22nd of July, the letdown hurt twice as much. But the review is being written after a cooling off period, so the emotions are subdued, and I have tried to write a regular review. (yes, my regular reviews are this detailed)

What was this?

I am a little confused about the genre of this series.

This is not an awareness series (unless you count the name of the condition mentioned briefly on the screen).

This is not a love story.

It is not a mystery series of why his wife left him in the first place. Because that mystery never gets solved.

This is not a story of relationships, because all characters are so poorly sketched and even more shallowly presented.

If the idea was to showcase that Indians are not as open to their problems in bed as our woke metro brethren, that also flops, because, as the director already knows, sexologists are found only in small town India. And they make enough moneys to put large scale full wall ads from where the makers have shamelessly picked the name of the series. (I hope they sent a small royalty cheque to the original Dr. Arora, whose name also they have blatantly just picked up).

I am not sure, honestly, what this is. The short answer is, it really isn't anything. Its just that random mishmash that amounts to absolutely nothing.

Why this series should not have seen the light of day/night/OTT

I don't know any baba that gives private meetings of a certain kind to all female devotees.

I also don't know any SP who walks as comically as the character of SP Tomar.

I don't know any three time MLA who gets so publicly humiliated by his bedridden father at all times.

Women do not randomly invite male neighbours home, nor scream to them at night. That is not how colonies in small town India operate.

But most offensive of all, was the stalking of his ex-wife by Dr. Vishesh Arora. By the fourth episode, it is perfectly easy to start despising the character and wondering why he is stalking someone who so completely rejected him more than 17 years ago. What kind of content is being sold with the background music of a romantic song? A random romantic song playing in the background, a middle aged man looking wistfully into the distance, does not make stalking ok. I can't remember when I was that angry about the way women are projected on screen. (hence, the cooling off period before the review) .

There is no storyline.

The characters, like I mentioned already, are shallow and poorly sketched. Make that not sketched at all. Its like a series of random caricatures that one forcibly fits into a room and then tries to build something around them.

The dialogues are so forgettable that i can't remember a single representative one, and I usually write a couple of representative dialogues in the review.

The art direction is as cliched as it gets. Neither authentic nor intriguing.

The other technical aspects - lighting, sound, cinematography, research, well, lets just say they are being omitted for a reason. The director omitted them from his work too.

Only one thing they did well - the casting. A script so laughable, so wrong at so many levels, needed superb acting. And the cast - lead and ensemble, does just that. Each actor is well chosen.

What their writer forgot to do in the script, the casting director has done in the auditions - and that is doubly laudable because s/he had so little to go on.

One line review:

This is the work of a woke director sitting in some metro who does not know his/her characters, their stories, their life beliefs, even their mannerisms, but insists on telling a story about them.