Pankaj Tripathi's 'Criminal Justice Season 4- A Family Matter' web-series review: Time to finally adjourn the court?

Cast: Pankaj Tripathi, Shweta Basu Prasad, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Surveen Chawla, Mita Vasisht

Director: Rohan Sippy

Language: Hindi

The innocent and innocuous Madhav Mishra returns for a fourth season of Criminal Justice. There are no cliff-hangers in this show. Think of this web series as the Housefull and Golmaal of OTT. After every few years, we get new stories being churned out with the same characters. Even when you know all possible conflicts have been dabbled with, something inspires makers to come back and make no bones about it. Is there ever a saturation point? The swiftness of new seasons and sequels suggest otherwise.

It’s only for the caliber of an actor of Pankaj Tripathi that right from the first time we met him in 2020 till now, he seems to have inhaled the nuances of this lawyer who uses both intelligence and innocence to get his job done. Right in the first episode, his client gives him a swanky car for getting a not-so-complicated job done. Think of Satish Shah and Shah Rukh Khan in Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani but more towards realism than razzmatazz.

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And then there’s a strange and awkward couple (a surprisingly wooden Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub and his wife Surveen Chawla). He has a girlfriend who’s brutally murdered (Asha Negi) but this dynamic of Patni Patni Aur Woh is unconvincingly addressed for the longest time. This flashback is so laid back in its telling that you crave for Tripathi to be back on the screen. Despite those inevitable jump cuts and a pulsating background score, the drowsy performances deflate all the necessary moments of tension.

And then there are the investigation and early courtroom scenes filmed for laughs. That a reputed doctor being forced to confess to a crime he claims he didn’t commit looks silly. What looks sillier is how the scene where his bail is rejected is staged. Director Rohan Sippy showed immense promise in films like Bluffmaster and Dum Maaro Dum, rightly combining humour and thrill with delicious writing. As much as it’s joyous to watch murder mysteries, especially with actors like Tripathi (with his now vintage wry grin), it’s hard to overlook the glaring gaps in between moments of promise.

A series like Criminal Justice can be accused of trying to be too many things at once. It wants to be a solid whodunit, it wants to present a hapless and horrified central character (It all started with Vikrant Massey in part one), and it also wants to be a satire (a la Jolly LLB). Ambitious but also awkward. For how long will a fluid actor like Tripathi carry the weight of a show that cannot make up its mind what it wants to be? But there are occasional pleasures too. For instance, Mita Vashisht’s third run as a lawyer after Ghulam and Phir Milenge.

There is absolutely no ground left to explore, no juiciness to extract, and no wicked humour to flaunt. As Tripathi said in an interview recently, it only gives him the opportunity to increase his bank balance. His line in one key scene ‘Yeh trial lamba chalne waala hai’ holds true for this show as well. Is it time to finally adjourn the court?

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

Criminal Justice Season 4 is now streaming on Jio Hotstar