The Great Indian Murder review: An eccentric mystery show that revels in its pulpy, convoluted, cross-country plot

It is a sprawling series. From the forests of Chattisgarh to the islands of Andaman, to Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and of course Delhi – the scene of the murder, the show takes you on a journey through diverse regions across India, in its effort to weave an intricate, proudly pulpy tale of crime and politics. It might just be cabin fever, but this travelogue undercurrent turns out to be one of the show’s biggest strengths, because the plot itself has far too many things going on all at once. There is one main ‘murder’ of course; but then we see so many people being killed before and after the key incident, it feels like murder is just another attribute of the India we’re witnessing on The Great Indian Murder . The show is adapted from Vikas Swarup’s 2008 novel Six Suspects and is transported to a broadly present-day India, which seems wholly different from the India of 2008. It kicks off with two bloody corpses accidentally found by cops, in the trunk of a car. (They are minor girls, no less.) The vehicle is registered to Vicky Rai (Jatin Goswami). A businessman and the son of a state legislator named Jagannath Rai (Ashutosh Rana), Vicky embodies Rich D#ck Energy like no recent Hindi series character I can think of. This guy is Vivek Oberoi’s Vikrant Dhawan from Inside Edge on crack. Seriously, the show consistently goes above and beyond in depicting him as a cocky, entitled, unscrupulous, misogynistic prick.

Such immense effort has been taken to establish Vicky’s incorrigible moral depravity, that when he is shot dead at a lavish farmhouse party in Delhi, practically anyone he has ever interacted with could be considered a suspect. Enter CBI officer Suraj Yadav (Pratik Gandhi), who is tasked with solving the case, with the assistance of a cop named Sudha Bharadwaj ( Richa Chadha ). The mystery is unravelled by flitting through time periods, through the accounts and individual perspectives of an assortment of witnesses and suspects in the years, months and days leading up to the farmhouse murder. But then, there’s also a sacred statue belonging to a tribe in the Andamans that’s making its way from the distant Eastern island territories all the way to the nation’s capital. And there’s a corrupt bureaucrat named Mohan Kumar who has ‘dissociative identity disorder’ – his alternative identity happens to be one Mohandas K. Gandhi. And there is the political tussle in the state of Chattisgarh, at the heart of which is politician Jagannath Rai. And there’s a masked YouTuber who has made it their mission to expose the grotesque underbelly of power. (Not to mention that when Chattisgarh is involved, you can safely assume that Naxalism is also brought in somehow.) Truly, the plot has so many new strands popping up so often, that I soon became indifferent to where the murder investigation was headed and what it was trying to say. Everyone has an agenda, so trust no one. Our country holds a bottomless pit of the oppressed, so poor people are expendable. Money can buy power, and power is king. These are all hallmarks of Indian (System x Society), on screen and off. Got it. The fun lies in the throwaway scenes and events that occur, completely unrelated to the plot. Like how Mohan Kumar’s inner Gandhi comes out – after he is hit on the head by a freak danda falling from the hand of a giant Bapu statue, no less. Or the spontaneous reaction to a strolling dachshund from the Andamani tribal boy Eketi, who ends up a murder suspect. Or even the chillingly casual reaction of the wily Jagannath Rai, when he watches the news of Babri Masjid being brought down on 6 December, 1992. He knows this will result in a whole new kind of politics in the Hindi heartland, so his machinations begin almost instantly.

The story frequently gives off the vibe of a mashup of Sacred Games, Inside Edge and Paatal Lok, so the X-factor comes through director Tigmanshu Dhulia.

You can almost sense that he had a blast making something this audacious and quirky. There is some great craft on display in individual scenes, and the acting ensemble does a thoroughly competent job breathing life into the script. This may not turn out to be Pratik Gandhi’s most memorable role, but he still gets to display a lot of range and ability here. Richa Chadha turns up yet again as a morally dubious police officer embroiled in a complicated series of events (after the Voot show Candy), and she’s effortlessly good yet again. The finest of the lot by some distance, though, are Ashutosh Rana and Raghubir Yadav, who are uncannily committed to their respective characters. Sharib Hashmi, Shashank Arora, Amey Wagh, Himanshi Choudhary and pretty much everyone else turns in competent performances. The show doesn’t have one specific protagonist or character to root for, which is a bit of a bummer. But in the absence of that, you do notice Jatin Goswami quite a bit. I haven’t seen his prior work, but his vile Vicky Rai is a bit of a knockout performance, even after factoring in how over-written his character’s flaws are. It is indeed the writing - by Dhulia, Vijay Maurya and Puneet Sharma - that is both the hero and the villain of the piece. Characters are set up as people with strong motives to kill Vicky early on, but are then forgotten about for large portions of the show, or just ignored completely. New characters, in turn, keep appearing all through. In general, a high level of suspension of disbelief is required, to be able to forget the bigger picture and enjoy specific scenes and moments. Yet, despite the plot becoming too convoluted beyond a point, the show is always up on energy, always willing to demand that you drop the mystery for a bit and focus on the present oddity on display. And really, when the guy who died absolutely deserved to die, you know that the point of the plot is not ‘whodunit’ or even ‘whydunit’. Here, it is more on the lines of wheredunit – because India is the real scene of the crime. There’s some perverse entertainment to be had while watching all these crazy, disparate events unfold in distinct places, each with distinctively Indian characteristics nonetheless. The death of Vicky Rai is merely where all of it converges. The Great Indian Murder is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar

Pradeep Menon is a Mumbai-based writer and independent filmmaker.