Ex Stream Benefits: From Tanaav to My Policeman to Khakee, revisiting the best on OTT in the month that was

With a few exceptions, November was another disappointing month on the streaming platform. The new season of The Crown, coming as it did right after the Queen’s death, was a major letdown. Looking at the ones that make the cut… Tanaav (SonyLIV): [caption id=“attachment_11727671” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Tanaav[/caption] Applause Entertainment deserves another round of applause for bringing alive the celebrated Israeli series Fauda in the Kashmiri context. The adaptation was clever and compelling , with Sudhir Mishra and Sachin Krishn’s direction constantly creating a clenched tension. Authentic in look and speech, _Tanaav_ did full justice to the Israeli series Fauda, paying a homage and yet creating a beast of its own. The terror contexts are smartly localized. The characters do not waste time in allowing us to get to know them. Their jobs are well-planned from before. Heads will role, tides will turn and the fugitive terrorist Umar will find his nemesis Hats off to the makers for showing the way ahead for adaptations.They need not be a cut and paste job. Employing Kashmiri actors was a big plus in Tanaav. Breathe Into The Shadows (Amazon Prime Video): [caption id=“attachment_11727681” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Breathe 2[/caption] A winner for Amazon, this series is now into the third season—actually second, since the first _Breathe_ _series_ has no relation to the second and third—and still going great guns.And other ammunitions. Abhishek Bachchan ’s intense glances go a long way in furnishing the series with a fleeting mystique. He is at once a loving husband-father, and a serial killer, here being prodded into homicide by the amusing Naveen Kasturia. The entire take on what a troubled childhood could do to you was a bit like all icing no cake but nonetheless edible. Khakee The Bihar Chapter (Netflix): [caption id=“attachment_11727701” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Khakee[/caption] Where were the Bihari actors in this rugged excursion into Bihar’s mythical gangland? Where for that matter, was the real Bihar? But nonetheless the series captured the capture of ganglord Chandan Mahato , played with a persistent authenticity by Avinash Tiwary , with more bravado and less nuance. The seven episodes were gripping in a brutally shallow kind of way. Fun while it lasted. But did it really do justice to Bihar’s top cop Amit Lodha’s memoir? Monica, O My Darling (Netflix): [caption id=“attachment_11727711” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Monica, O My Darling[/caption] Other than the fact that one of the female protagonists is named Monica, Asha Bhosle’s cabaret number had little to do with this nifty noire suspense thriller. There are so many wheels-within-wheels here, it feel like an out-of-control ferriswheel. This is Vasan Bala ’s first directorial deep-dive since Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota into the bowels of eccentricity. Rajkummar Rao as Jayant a small-town boy from Angola working in a giant robot-manufacturing organization in Mumbai is wimpy, partially demonic, partially a victim of fate…if Fate looks anything like Huma Qureshi who plays Monica a crooked femme fatale a squealer-dealer in pursuit of big bucks via big …never mind. Qureshi’s Monica is a delectably subverted femme fatale. An imposter Marilyn Monroe who lets the skirt fly only when she is sure there are men looking. Somehow I felt Ms Qureshi fell short of the character’s brazen avarice. Her cabaret at the beginning of the film again proves after that limp item song in Gangubai Kathiawadi that she better leave the dancing to those better equipped. Her performance as a woman who empowers herself by conning men is tonally correct, but unable to scale the summits of seductive salvation it was written to. Radhika Apte as a gritty sarcastic cop nails it. It’s interesting to see how the women in poor Jayant’s life bully him: Qureshi at first, then Apte and then of course the bimboesque boss’ daughter played with an arresting airheadedness by Akansha Ranjan Kapoor. Monica O My Darling has a sharp tangy taste to its storytelling . But it eventually gets tangled in its own ambitions. It wants to be dark sexy voluptuous enigmatic satire, but lacks the wherewithal to leap over the plotting hurdles that impede the protagonist Jayant’s progression from a harmless smalltown dreamer to a scheming rat. My Policeman (Amazon Prime): [caption id=“attachment_11727721” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] My Policeman[/caption] Outwardly Michael Grandage’s My Policeman will remind you of the Russian romantic drama Firebird from 2021 in which two soldiers of the Russian army conduct a clandestine gay affair under the military regime’s disapproving nose. Discovery would not only mean expulsion from the army but also imprisonment.My Policeman takes us elsewhere but the rules of sexual alliance remain unchanged. In the 1950s in England to be gay meant to be mentally ill . A homosexual had two choices, three actually: he could go to prison, go to a mental asylum or he could choose to lead a life of lies for as long as he is alive.Policeman Tom Burgess(Harry Styles) had more or less chosen the last option. But he never anticipated he would fall in love with a man.This delicately threaded love triangle, based on a novel titled My Policeman(a most inept title which says nothing about the resonant theme and treatment) doesn’t slip up even once while setting up the fragile relationship among three people who are subjected to the harsh glare of stigmatization in the 1950s.Sorting out a messy triangle where you discover that your husband’s best friend is his secret lover, is tough enough. On top of it facing the wrath of a disapproving nation makes it all the more insurmountable. Weighed down by its own lack of feasibility, the tangled triangle has only one resolution: death. Now old and dying,the museum curator Patrick Hazlewood (David Dawson) is brought home by Marion Taylor(Emma Corrin) at the beginning of the film. Her husband repudiates the very presence of his former bestfriend in their home. And understandably so. Patrick’s presence in their marriage destroyed all three dramatic personae in this passion play of ruination.The editing takes us from the present into the stormy past and then back again in the present. The timeline works splendidly for the drama, imbuing the raging past with a sense of inevitable doom. The narrative is thin-crusted but never brittle. There is an inner strength about the three main characters, specially the wife played by the stupendous Emma Corrin(who was Lady Diana in Season 4 of The Crown). Corrin plays the naïve schoolteacher who is used as a beard by her husband and bestfriend. She is at once clueless and clued in, a potential victim but unwilling to accept her destiny as a pawn in the messy triangle. Interestingly two sets of actors are used in the plot to play the young and aging version of the three protagonists. Although none of them looks anything like his or her counterpart, there is a beguiling aching sense of karmic continuity in the narration, as if the protagonists are bound to doom by destiny.No matter what your sexual orientation, My Policeman is a film that will steal away a part of you forever. It is a powerfully told story of three weak but resilient people who love one another. But not quite in the way they would have liked to. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News  and  Entertainment News  here. 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