Kathmandu Connection review: Ample action, shootouts, and conspiracies add up to vacuous purposelessness in SonyLIV series

In a bid to create the kind of tension that will outlive the duration of their runtime, most shows and movies (recent example being Anurag Basu’s Ludo) end with a shootout. Sachin Patnaik’s Kathmandu Connection begins with one. From the outset, it’s clear this is not a show subtle about its intentions of creating tension time and again, even if it is unable to sustain it over six episodes, each of them drawn out for almost an hour. The opening sequence is also shot in black and white: It introduces us to its central protagonist, DCP Samarth Kaushik (Amit Sial) who guns down two young men suspected of terrorism in an encounter. Besides the suspense, the idea of the scene is to establish Kaushik as a morally ambiguous cop. The consequences of his rampage (that claims the life of an innocent Muslim man) cloud the show’s narrative throughout. But Sial’s Kaushik doesn’t have the emotional depth of Sartaj Singh from Sacred Games or the naked desperation of Paatal Lok’s Hathiram Choudhary. That is to say that Kaushik is reduced to a parody of an antagonist and not exactly an antihero, his moral failings and cheap motivations not compelling enough to shoulder a viewer’s curiosity for almost six hours. Set in the aftermath of the 1993 blasts, the show (it is written by Siddharth Mishra) – now streaming on SonyLiv – revolves around three parallel cases. In the mix are a murdered cop, an abducted businessman, and a primetime journalist chased by a relentless stalker. An investigation into these three cases leads Kaushik, his partner (Anurag Arora) and CBI Officer Hitesh Agarwal (a fine Gopal Datt) to discover that they’re all somehow connected to Kathmandu. The action of the story, invariably, is located in Kaushik travelling to Kathmandu to join the pieces of the puzzle. [caption id=“attachment_9557401” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Still from Kathmandu Connection[/caption] One of the chief drawbacks of Kathmandu Connection is its inability to sustain its tone. Take for example the fact that the show starts out as a tense investigation into the blasts, suddenly switches track to foreground a love triangle involving a journalist, a cop, and, a gangster (evidently modelled on Chota Ranjan), and then culminates into a revenge fable replete with comeuppances. It’s evident that none of these tracks are fleshed out because they never arrive at any point of cohesion. The writing too is clunky enough to be forgettable the minute after they are uttered. Then there’s the convoluted plot, at odds with the pace of the show which doesn’t take forever to come to the point as much as it meanders around it aimlessly. More importantly, the makers seem to forget the point why a cat and mouse chase still endures. These narratives hinge on a measure of emotional exchange between two personalities, who survive not against each other but despite each other. The show, shoddily directed and unevenly cast, can boast of no such intensity, fizzling out by the second episode. After a point, the show even sacrifices the responsibilities of long-form storytelling. There is very little to discern beyond watching a set of people act self-serious and point guns at each other after frequent intervals the same way we take to incessantly scrolling on our phones. In a way, it brings to mind the leeway that creators and filmmakers have come to enjoy these days due to the increasing commissioning demand from streaming platforms. The fact that they can make any substandard show and get away with it has never looked as outrage worthy as it does while watching Kathmandu Connection. Watching the six episodes, I couldn’t help but think: if a show is unable to answer the fundamental question of why should a view care about it, then does it hold any value? And if it doesn’t, does the future for Indian streaming mean being stacked to the brim with shows and movies that exist for the sake of existing? That’s a terrifying thought. Much more than any of the show’s plot twists can muster. Although to be fair, on paper, Kathmandu Connection has all the ingredients for a crime thriller: there’s ample glaring, shootouts, and terse conspiracies but they almost always add up to nothing. Derived of purpose, the turns that most episodes take are shorn of clarity. The result is a show that goes nowhere.