What do you anticipate from a Tigmanshu Dhulia film? Something resembling Paan Singh Tomar, but then you get The Great Indian Murder. Dhulia has already provided us with OTT programmes such as Out of Love and Criminal Justice, so the standard was set high for this one. However, sometime along the way, the series loses its Tigmanshu Dhulia touch, and we are left in the dark.
The Great Indian Murder, which is currently available on Disney+ Hotstar, is an absurdly bad adaptation of a maddeningly ambitious novel. It’s based in part on Vikas Swarup’s 2008 whodunit Six Suspects — Swarup is best renowned for his novel Slumdog Millionaire, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire — which, via its six eponymous suspects, remarks on nearly everything under the sun.
Class, politics, indigenous peoples, nationalists, the spoilt elite, the underprivileged, and Gandhian ideas are all addressed in Swarup’s work. Not all of these make it into The Great Indian Murder, but as the refashioned grandiose title suggests, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s (Paan Singh Tomar) new Hotstar Specials series is no less brazen.
Swarup’s novel failed to put it all together, but The Great Indian Murder fails even more spectacularly.
Dhulia and his partners — actor-writer Vijay Maurya (Toofaan, Radhe) and lyricist Puneet Sharma (Dhamaka) — just throw in the towel after failing to grasp the hundreds of characters and their interweaving narratives. (Among the producers is Ajay Devgn.) Its nine episodes vary greatly in tone and presentation.
There is no coherence to any of it; a plethora of concepts not only conflict with one another in the same episode, but stay bizarrely separate. Pop culture is meant to draw comparisons, but Dhulia and company are incapable of doing so.
The series is based on the book Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup, which was released in 2008. Pratik Gandhi, last seen in Scam 1992, steals the show. Suraj Yadav, a CBI inspector who helps Richa Chadha in investigating a shocking murder, is played by Pratik.
The plot begins with a politician’s son, Jatin Goswami AKA Vicky Rai, who is the epitome of a brat. He is the son of Chhattisgarh’s Home Minister, Jagannath Rai. He is obstinate, annoying, and, of course, lacks manners. His chemistry with Paoli Dam, who plays Bollywood star Shabnam Saxena, is equally realistic and believable. Vicky hitting on his step sister or being a huge douchebag because of his father are both tropes in the programme. The majority of the narrative is predictable. The series, on the other hand, brings the ugliness of politics to the forefront.
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While Richa Chadha and Pratik Gandhi are the show’s leads, their roles do not begin until the third episode. Richa Chadha is both natural and amazing. Pratik resurrects his 1992 charm.
So, what’s missing? To be specific, the tale and a suitable time frame. The plot of The Great Indian Murder centres around the son of a politician, Vicky Rai, and a dramatic murder with six suspects. Every event in the plot, from a sudden murder to determining who committed the crime, occurs for no apparent cause. The shift between the present and the past can be perplexing. You may even find yourself rewinding again in order to grasp what is truly going on.
The Great Indian Murder is all over the place, both metaphorically and practically. The episodes alternate between following a Raipur politician and his industrial family across Delhi, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan, following an Andaman native who travels from his remote home to Kolkata, Chennai, and Jharkhand in one episode, and delving into a retired bureaucrat who suffers from dissociative personality disorder and believes himself to be Mahatma Gandhi.
There are scores of mini-subplots peppered throughout, such as a tone-deaf investigation of Naxalism, dangers to investigative media reporting, and government lackeys’ careless disinformation and surveillance tactics.
It’s extremely perplexing that The Great Indian Murder made it beyond the page on Disney+ Hotstar. Calling it the worst thing it has ever created is also an understatement, considering its thoroughly shady track record in the Hotstar Specials area (and its movie equivalent, Disney+ Hotstar Multiplex). There’s a case to be made that these local originals have only harmed the platform’s and brand’s reputation since their inception.
While the HBO intro animation and sound — Disney+ Hotstar will continue to be HBO’s home in India until at least the launch of HBO Max — are associated with a history of great content, I now get the opposite feeling whenever the Hotstar Specials logo animation and accompanying drums sound appear on screen. It’s horrifying and terrifying to me, as my thinking wonders, “What tragedy will they bring this time?” After City of Dreams, The Office, Special Ops, Sadak 2, Laxmii, The Big Bull, and Bhuj: The Pride of India, what else is there? What comes after The Great Indian Murder?
If you like Vikas Swarup’s book, you might not enjoy the performance. However, few directors are successful in translating novels into films.
While the show opens on a high note in episode one, by the third episode, we had lost interest. Slow writing in a thriller is definitely not a winning formula.
