OTT Yearender 2022: From Delhi Crime 2 to Criminal Justice Adhura Sach, the best series of the year

It has been a great year for the web world. And as the year ends, we look at the best of the year, from Delhi Crime 2 to Criminal Justice Adhura Sach .

Delhi Crime 2 (Netflix): Thank God, the second season turned out to be as gripping, if not more than the first season. The characters from the Delhi Police are now etched as the DPs of our collective imagination. Vartika Chaturvedi, Neeti Singh, Bhupendra Singh, Subhash Gupta, Jairaj and the rest of the force are characters we all know well by now, and admire for being so dedicated to their work it almost seems as if we are looking at the other side of the much-maligned police force’s image.Rest assured, neither the first season nor the second is a police procedural designed to whitewash the police force. The plot on this occasion has no room for negotiating with propaganda . The five episodes are edited down to a lean lithe lissom litany of crime and punishment, designed with the rare care of a work of art.

2. Criminal Justice: Adhura Sach (Disney-Hotstar): Applause Entertainment’s legal drama now in its third season, draws its life force from the central performance by Pankaj Tripathi. His Madhav Mishra is the kind of downmarket lawyer no South Mumbai crime-accused would employ unless desperate .Mukul(Aditya Gupta,overacting all the way) is a juvenile murder-accused . Madhav plunges into the complex case of a high-profile child star Zara’s murder, and comes up with a few surprise which you will see in the weeks to come by, since the platform in all its wisdom, has decided to stream one episode every Friday. By the time the truth about Zara’s murder is revealed her screen parents Swastika Mukherjee and Purab Kohli may have torn each other apart in frustration. Who knows!There is no telling about the closure of whodunits. This one gets it right.

3. Mithya (Zee5): This is the kind of ballsy breakneck thriller that doesn’t shy away from addressing illicit sleazy relationships, even if it brings the protagonists’ heroism down by many pegs , and I do mean pegs, as the characters drink themselves silly and get their innerwear into a budge time after time. Every main character in Mithya, produced by Applause Entertainment is flawed and to watch one of them turn around and act holier-than-thou after another makes a cardinal error, is ironical, to say the least. Set in an idyllic tranquil hill station, just as the Sippys’ earlier web(of deceit) series Aranya, this one constructs a sinister spiral of deceit revenge and nemesis, all stewed in the juices of a steamy karmic cycle.

4. The Fame Game (Netflix): Rarely do all the components of a webseries, creative and otherwise, come together as fluently as they do in The Fame Game, earlier title more appropriately as Finding Anamika. This IS a series about searching for the superstar Anamika Anand played by superstar Madhuri Dixit, the last of the iconic Bollywood actresses who emerges from her cocoon of self-exile with a performance suffused with subtle flourishes which tell us why she is Madhuri Dixit. Call her by any another name, Anamika Anand will do. She is still that consummate superstar with that enigmatic smile which tells us everything and gives away nothing. The other star of this intriguing often provocative thriller is Sri Rao’s writing. Across the 8 episodes Rao leaves not a single loose end for us to mourn and carp over . Nothing happens here without reason.

5. Eternally confused & Eager For Love (Netflix): And the award for the best voice performance since Aamir Khan gave voice to the dog in Zoya Akhtar’s Dil Dadhakne Do, goes to Jim Sarbh. He plays the protagonist Ray’s alter-ego. Sarbh voices all of Ray’s naughtiest vices and unplumbed virtues Sarabh proves a third dimension to this delectably young and vibrant series written and directed by Rahul Nair. Hard to believe this is Rahul’s first.

6. Guilty Minds (Amazon Prime Video): This one is India’s own Boston Legal, spiced up, tadka maar ke. Guilty Minds sets out to score points for being able to hijack our attention for ten episodes, each has a different story to tell . Not all of it is equally engrossing. But the storytelling even when faltering and fumbling to cram in too many social issues never ceases to be compelling. Guilty Minds works because it doesn’t try to penetrate too far into the minds of the perpetrators. It is all done on the surface level, but with immense care and concentration, so that an impression of focused narration and uninterrupted tension is created even when the plot meanders into the characters’ personal lives which we are not really interested in.

7. Gullak Season (SonyLIV): Season 3 was marvelous written (by Durgesh Singh). The exchanges in the Mishra family were sharp (barb re barb!). But it wasn’t as if everyone was throwing rhetorics around like bricks at a passing procession. The dialogue-baazi seemed so apt ;the family looked so real ,thanks to the immersive performances by that wonderful couple Jameel Khan and Geetanjali Kulkarni.

8. Modern Love(Amazon Prime): Three of the six stories in this anthology were absolute winners. Hansal Mehta’s Baai featured Pratik Gandhi as the scion of a conservative Muslim family struggling in the closet. Rich in ambience, and brimming with romance music and elegance Baai is a classic representation of what can be done in the OTT space if a filmmaker has his heart set on it.While Pratik and debutant Ranveer Brar are splendidly paired as lovers, Baai brims over with wonderful actors in even the smallest part.

9. Salt City (SonyLIV ): This one is a revelation. How simply wonderful to sit through an uncluttured neatly arranged nimbly knitted unhurried slow-burn series which tells it like it is.No frills, no fancy fictioneering, no props. Just an ordinary middleclass family in Mumbai struggling to keep its collective head above the water.As the tensions in the Bajpai family came to a boil, a simmering tension envelopes the characters. The dramatic tension implodes but never in a burst .It is always done in a silent stifled scream of protest.

10. Avrodh 2 (SonyLIV): Mercifully, this one escapes the mythic ‘Curse Of Season 2’. It is smartly written and it does full justice to the source material. Adapted from Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh’s book, India’s Most Fearless 2, Avrodh Season 2 takes us back to the politics of 2016 when demonetization was introduced overnight and Pakistan was hellbent on vitiating the Indian economy with fake currency. The surgical strike strikes this season of Avrodh, off-camera. Playing an income tax officer with an army background named Pradeep Bhattacharya, Abir Chatterjee makes an impressive Hindi debut . He is understated and clued-in and carries the show effortlessly to its ambiguous ending.And yes he speaks fluent Hindi. Cannily constructed and intelligently plotted, Avrodh’s Season 2 makes for a compelling watch. The action scenes are maturely staged, the military activities ring true .

11. Four More Shots, Please Season 3 (Amazon Prime): Anjana(Kirti Kulhari), Siddhi(Maanvi Gagroo), Umang(Bani J) and Damini(Sayani Gupta) are back. But make no mistake about who the real stars of this tongue-lashing whip-series are. Full marks to series creator Rangita Pritish Nandy, writer Devika Bhagat, dialogue writer Ishita Moitra and director Joyeeta Patpatia for investing so keenly into the characters . Besides the four protagonists,the rest of the casting also remains nearly impeccable. This season there are interesting additional actors like Shilpa Shukla,Rohan Mehra, Jim Sarbh and Sushant Singh playing actors who most certainly add to the enticing patina.The tone is deliciously elitist: posh hotels are the favourite shooting spot. This doesn’t take away from the show’s connectible joie de vivre. Constantly showing the middle finger to conventions Four More Shots, Please remains a game-changing show, for allowing four saucy sassy sexy women the freedom to do what they like.

12. Tanaav (SonyLIV) : 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.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.

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