Dahaad aka Roar [dir. Reema Kagti]

I'll say one thing for Reema Kagti and her frequent collaborator Zoya Akhtar: With an output that includes material as diverse as Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (ZNMD), Talaash, Dil Dhadkne Do (DDD) and Gully Boy, they are certainly versatile. Of course, there is the question of whether this versatility is backed by sufficient substance. ZNMD and DDD are fluffy crowd-pleasers providing an aspirational upper-crust western-influenced lifestyle married with some desi sentiment; like Karan Johar films, but less insufferable. Talaash (2012) and Gully Boy (2019) treaded grimier territory - the former was a crime noir with some supernatural underpinnings, the latter showcased the gritty saga of a lower middle-class Muslim boy using art to first shut himself off from his circumstances, and then to rise above them. The results are more mixed here, but they do achieve a credible texture in their capture of the urban underbelly. Kagti also made a period sports film called Gold (2018) with the country's biggest wannabe patriot Akshay Kumar, which I really did not care for (my impressions HERE).

The point of this extended prelude is, if Kagti and Akhtar do not necessarily have first-hand knowledge of the culture and milieu captured in their crime series Dahaad, they can be relied on to do their research to provide a sufficiently nuanced portrayal, at least for the purposes of mainstream entertainment. The setting here is mofussil Rajasthan, primarily the town of Mandawa. Progress, both technological and social, is lagging behind metropolitan India: Smartphones are rare, as are dedicated career women. Sub-inspector Anjali Bhaati (Sonakshi Sinha) faces the double-whammy of being both a woman and a lower-caste. When her team goes investigating, Anjali is barred from entering the homes of the dominant caste. A running gag shows an upper-caste colleague in the police station lighting incense to ward off her aura. Her melodramatic mother is constantly at her to get married. Like with Sinha's previous character Akira, Anjali's reaction to these challenges is to double down and fight even harder, because to give an inch would be to give up the fight altogether.

In several ways this series' antagonist is her antithesis. Anand Swarnakar (Vijay Varma, who I first saw in Gully Boy) is the eldest son in a traditional well-to-do goldsmith family. He is an articulate soft-spoken language teacher, much admired by his pupils and colleagues. While dismissed by his businessman father as a non-achieving black sheep, he has a shining reputation for his efforts at educating children in remote areas during his weekend leisure. Even his wife, who is carrying on an affair with a workplace colleague, believes Anand to be a noble man. But Anand is also a serial killer that preys on lower-caste women, first seducing and then murdering them (no spoilers here, the series is not a whodunit, but about how he is ultimately caught).

Anjali and Anand's paths cross when she comes upon a string of disappearances of under-privileged women who apparently eloped with an unknown lover; she charts a connection between them, concluding that a single man is behind all of it. Of course, the idea of a serial killer in Mandawa is laughable to most of her colleagues. Her only support comes from Station House Officer Devi Singh (Gulshan Devaiah), whose interest in her may be more than professional. Going back and forth in time, the series follows Anand's crimes and the efforts of Anjali and her colleagues to unmask an intelligent and remorseless killer.

There are many things to like about Dahaad, but some missteps as well. Sonakshi's Anjali is a spunky protagonist, determined to breach the limits placed by society. Even if it occasionally seems too eager to signal Anjali's liberated spirit (she has a casual sex relationship with a drinking buddy we never see outside of that context) Kagti-Akhtar's characterization is strong in terms of expressing Anjali's determination to be a tough girl in a tough world. Devaiah's Devi Singh is less well-etched - It's nice to see the actor playing a "good guy", but Devi comes across so "correct" in all his opinions and actions, he is bland as oatmeal. His character has a 'manufactured' feel, as though Kagti-Akhtar wanted to imbue all their expectations for an ideal male into him. I was ready to throw up when Devi Singh gives his son the sort of enlightened talk about women and sex most metropolitan men wouldn't. Even when introducing the idea of Devi being attracted to Anjali (which may be further developed in the almost certain second season), they appear obliged to soften it by giving him a shrewish nag wife.

Sohum Shah's Parghi is a competing colleague to Anjali who is trying to obtain a transfer by currying favor with his superiors. He shows some interesting character development, especially in his reluctance to bring a child into an increasingly fucked up world (I empathize), but his transformation towards the end of the season could have been better articulated. Vijay Varma's killer is a lot more believable - his modus operandi is based on a real-life character dubbed as Cyanide Mohan. Unlike the glamorous psychopaths from the Hannibal Lecter universe, Anand doesn't believe in playing amusing mind-games with the police or arranging his victims in artistic tableaux. He is a blunt petty-minded villain, whose cloak of civility only shrouds an unmitigated ugliness. Even when alluding to a childhood trauma, the writing and Varma's performance do not try to generate sympathy for the character; they only show how he uses it to further manipulate people around him. 

A few logical missteps notwithstanding* my only disappointment was that the caste hierarchy element has little play in the investigation of the actual killer - It would have been interesting if Anjali's sometimes reckless pursuit of Anand had been labeled as caste revenge and affected her agency. Still, Dahaad was a nicely paced procedural with a well-realized setting, and I would recommend it to fans of dark crime thrillers.

*One thing that bothered me was, in a narrative so conscious of caste identity, why did the suspect's name Swarnakar (literally meaning 'Goldsmith') not ring immediate warning bells for the cops, especially since it is revealed to them beforehand that cyanide is used by the gold industry. Instead, they continue to fret over where he could obtain the poison. It also occurred to me a lot earlier than to these intrepid investigators that the killer, after having sex with his victims, was persuading them to consume the cyanide by disguising it as a contraceptive or morning-after pill.

Arnold [dir. Lesley Chilcott]

You don't actually need the 3-episode Netflix documentary mini-series to understand the psyche of Arnold Schwarzenegger. This less-than-5min interview clip taken from the time he was filming Conan the Barbarian (1982) will suffice:

Remember here, this is before Conan had been released and made his name as a major league Hollywood star that could crush box-office records across the world. Arnold's primary reputation then was as a star bodybuilder, who had worked in a few small movies, and none as the leading man. But he is unironically comparing himself to Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford. With regards to his pathway towards stardom, he rates himself an "8 out of 10, with only 2 more points to cover".

Anyone that saw this footage at the time would have laughed his butt off at the man's audacity. Arnold's hulking frame, unmistakably Teutonic face and thick Austrian accent were considered liabilities in the Hollywood of that period. The only opportunities for bodybuilders to get leading roles had been in low-budget Italian "sword and sandal" movies (his idol Reg Park had done a string of Hercules movies in Rome in the early 60's before returning to the bodybuilding business).

But Arnold, from an early time in life, had a staggering level of belief in himself - what in some other man would have been vainglorious boasting, he set out to make truth. This is echoed in the documentary when he says [paraphrasing], "If I can visualize something clearly, then I know 100% that I can get there." In its 3 defined chapters - Athlete, Actor and American - Arnold sets out to demonstrate its subject's determination to "get there" in each of his chosen endeavors. It goes without saying that the treatment is glossy with more than a little dash of hagiography. It would have been essential of course, to obtain the kind of access they get to Arnold, the superstar for whom "Too big is not big enough".

So we get the familiar story of how young Schwarzenegger took up bodybuilding as a means of making his mark and getting away from the hard life in Austria with the aim of making it big in the USA. Once he had conquered the bodybuilding world (he held the Mr. Olympia trophy undefeated from 1970-75), he shifted gears to movies. Along with main box-office rival Sylvester Stallone, Arnold went on to personify the hyper-masculine gun and muscle toting 80's action hero, an icon that transcended language and culture. Over the next 2 decades, his films dominated global mainstream cinema and he became one of the highest paid actors in the world. In 2003, Arnold jumped into active politics and served as Governor of California for 2 terms.

Many of the details in Arnold are supposedly from his autobiography Total Recall. For people like me that haven't read it, there are some new details of Schwarzenegger's life: His upbringing in post-WW2 Austria where, in his words, a lot of men suffered from depression and PTSD, and this reflected on their families. Gustav Schwarzenegger had been a member of the military police in the Nazi-occupied country before being discharged in 1944 on account of medical illness. Subsequently he married and raised 2 children, Meinhard and Arnold. Arnold talks about a disciplinarian upbringing interspersed with drunk beatings from his father. Meinhard died in his 20's in a DUI accident in 1971, a year before their father passed away from a stroke. At the time Arnold was busy with his bodybuilding career in the US; he did not go for either of their funerals, attributing it to being so focused on his goals that he suppressed all emotion in the process. He also talks about how the difficult childhood toughened him up (quoting Nietzsche's famous "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger") while his brother, who he says had a more "fragile" persona, cracked under the strain. Again, there is almost no emotion when he says this, no sense of a bond between them, and no sorrow or guilt over the brother's fate.

While I am aware of his film career trajectory, it was a revelation to know that he was a millionaire well before embarking on his movie career, having invested his earnings from bodybuilding into real estate and other business. Thus, he had the luxury of working on carefully chosen projects, never for rent money. The same shrewdness and self-possession that had served him as an athlete now guided his path towards the top of Hollywood. Having been lucky enough to work with creative powerhouses like John Milius (Conan) and James Cameron (The Terminator) in his early days, Schwarzenegger quickly translated his box-office currency into clout over the projects he worked on. He wanted to expand his range and appeal, and deliberately courted directors like Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall) and Ivan Reitman (Twins, Junior) who designed projects around him.

His political career is the least interesting aspect of Arnold's life for me, since it had no direct impact on my life. But it was also around this time that the cracks in his personal life appeared. He was accused by several women of having groped and/or misbehaved with them in the past (his sleazy on-camera behavior as a celebrity ambassador in this early Brazil tourism video makes it easy to believe those accusations). He expresses regret over the incidents in an empirical, grudging manner, more in the vein of a man who acknowledges their inconvenience to his reputation than a genuine reappraisal of his attitude.

More damagingly, his wife Maria Shriver divorced him over an affair he'd carried on with their housekeeper, fathering an illegitimate child in the process. In these issues, we are only privy to Schwarzenegger's perspective. We do not learn what Shriver or their children feel about his behavior. Most telling is that we see Arnold living alone in a sprawling house, with farm animals for company. While telling his story, he fondly pores over his own pictures over the course of his career(s). But the depiction of his interactions with family is restricted to still images taken years ago.

But Arnold is no depressed loner asking for your sympathy. Even at 70+, the alpha male in him loves oversized vehicle toys and machismo camaraderie. He believes in "work and fun", and exhorts people to channel their time to "being useful" instead of brooding over "What am I feeling today?" Advocates of empathy for mental health syndromes might balk at this mocking dismissal of depression, but for better or worse, this is just a reflection of the man's supreme self-focus and conquering attitude. It is the formula he has made to work for him.

Dancing on the Grave [Patrick Graham]

People of a particular generation based in Bengaluru city (in Southern India) will remember the sensational case of Shakereh Khaleeli, on which this new mini-series is based. Showrunner Patrick Graham, who had previously helmed OTT horror series like Ghoul and Betaal, takes a documentary approach, interspersing contemporary and archival interviews with re-enactments. I'm not usually one for potentially sordid true crime TV series content, but since Dancing on the Grave was only 4 half hour episodes long, it seemed like a decent diversion before starting on something else.

Shakereh Khaleeli (nee Namazie) came of an affluent and prestigious family linked to the Diwan of Mysore. She was married to Akbar Khaleeli, a high-ranking Indian diplomat and bore him 4 daughters. Wherever she accompanied her husband on his tours of diplomatic duty, Shakereh was known as a brilliant socialite, beautiful, witty and sophisticated. But during the late 70's Akbar went alone to Iran as India's Ambassador, it being around the time of the Iranian revolution. It was during this period she met Murli Manohar Mishra aka Swami Shraddhanand (SS). A godman-cum-fixer type, SS inveigled himself into the Khaleeli household by way of helping Shakereh with her business affairs. They set up a construction business in Bengaluru. During this period Shakereh divorced her husband and in 1986, less than a year after, got married to SS. The move led to Shakereh's estrangement from her family and former circle, who were aghast at the idea of this glamorous, sophisticated woman from a high family giving herself to a short stocky plebian who in their minds had undoubtedly snared her with an eye on her property.

Just a few years later, Shakereh seemed to have disappeared. Her daughter Sabah Khaleeli was at the time an in-demand model for ads and fashion shows - I remember being wowed as a kid by a glam cover pic of her in Femina (I am ashamed to say I only remembered the pic, and not the article it was part of). When Sabah, who had rekindled communication with her mum, found a sudden silence at Shakereh's end, she repeatedly enquired with SS, but found that he was fobbing her off with evasive answers about Shakereh being on extended holiday. In the meanwhile, he continued a lavish lifestyle in the Bengaluru home. Sabah went to the police and filed a missing persons complaint. The initial investigation was lackadaisical, frustrating her. Then things then began to slowly move. Almost 3 years after the report of her disappearance, Shakereh's body was uncovered as a skeleton buried in her own backyard and SS was arrested for her murder. He was convicted of the same, and sentenced to be harbored in jail till the end of his life, a term he is still serving.

Apart from covering the investigation, mainly by interviews with the investigating team and the legal authorities that worked the case, as well as journalists, the series does some superficial psycho-analyzing about how a smart social diva like Shakereh could have fallen prey to this ugly conman with dubious charm. Was she that lonely or desperate during Akbar's tenure in Iran? Did SS with his guidance of her business affairs, convince her that he could help her have a greater self-identity than being a diplomat's wife? There is talk about how SS claimed divine powers to grant her a male child, and how it later led to quarrels between them.

Shakereh's direct family (mother Gauhar Taj and daughter Sabah) are only seen in archival (90's) video footage. Some cousins and a nephew were newly interviewed for this series. In an eloquent and politely outraged manner (words like 'dastardly' roll unctuously off the nephew's tongue), they express their dismay at how one of their own was ensnared and brutally done away with by this lowly schemer, and insist that SS has only got the minimum punishment for his heinous crime. During their speeches, it repeatedly came to my mind, where were these family members when Shakereh had been reported missing. Going by Sabah's old interviews it appeared that she was running alone from pillar to post to get the police to take her complaints seriously. They had essentially abandoned her for daring to degrade their social standing with her poor choice in marriage. It is when the series moves on to show the perspective of SS himself that their current participation makes more sense.

Yes, SS is interviewed for this series, while still serving his sentence. In front of the camera, he pleads not guilty for Shakereh's death (his lawyer claims that has always been his stance). According to SS, he found Shakereh dead in her bed one morning when he carried in the tea; his crime , as he sees it, was to go into an immediate panic about how her family and the police would perceive his role in this matter. Instead of even calling in a doctor to ascertain the death, he directly proceeded to bury her body in secret. By any account this is a nonsense story. Shakereh was bundled into a specially constructed box and buried inside a deep pit dug in the yard (ostensibly for a tank). There is reference to evidence of fingernail scratches on the inside of the box, and her fingers tightly curled around the bedsheet she was buried in, indicating that she was likely alive at the time of burial, in a deeply sedated state. Even as he claims to have shared a deep bond of mutual love with Shakereh, there is no corresponding warmth in his eyes. He seems a man ready to try anything to see if it can get him a reprieve.

True, there are discrepancies in the prosecution case, which his lawyer points out. In the video captured at the time SS was led by the police to the crime site after being made to confess, he is seen to pull the keys of the house from his own pocket; they should have been part of sealed evidence when he was called in for questioning. The lawyer points out that is this a break in the chain of evidence, and suggests that the police could have easily used the keys at some previous juncture to plant sedatives in the house. Any criminal, he insists, would have discarded these sedatives in the 3 years after Shakereh's disappearance; it's a fair point. My own view is that although the police did get the right man, they knew the material evidence they had was purely circumstantial and may not be sufficient to obtain a conviction, hence 'bolstered' their case with some planted evidence.

The legal machinery may have also been under a lot of pressure by the family because Shakereh had made a will naming SS as the beneficiary. If he was not unequivocally convicted, he could make a claim for Shakereh's estate over the rest of her family. He had already made money off selling pockets of her land around the house, using the power of attorney she had bestowed on him. Still, there is the question, when so many habitual criminals with multiple murder crimes are given pardons for good behavior? Especially after more than half his life has been spent behind bars, and there is little likelihood of his posing a danger to society now, why is he being held without any hope of compassionate pardon? Surely he cannot, as a convicted criminal, hope to lay claim on the assets for which the crime was committed.

In terms of the making, I would think that the 'series' could instead have been a single 80-90 min documentary. In his groundbreaking Thin Blue Line docu-drama Errol Morris showed that re-enactments of incidents could be a powerful tool. Here, the re-enactments are extended to completely trivial and petty footage, a cheap shot at raising drama. Not the film-makers' fault, but the almost sneery nature of the relatives currently interviewed annoyed me, and I wish they had been questioned more strongly about the family's desertion of Shakereh, which led her to becoming an isolated lamb, easily hunted down by the wolf in disguise. The only place I got a genuine sense of grieving for this brutal crime was in the archival footage of Sabah and Shakereh's mother (former Femina editor Sathya Saran talks about the pain she always saw in Sabah's eyes).

Still, if you're interested in this piece of shocking true crime history, it's only a couple of hours of your time in all. Showing now in India on Amazon Prime.

Farzi [Raj & DK]

Couple nights back I finished with the first season of Farzi, the OTT-series on Amazon Prime. In this crime drama, talented artist Sandeep/Sunny (Shahid Kapur) turns small-time counterfeiter, and then gets involved with high-level players. On the flip side, a job-obsessed but deeply flawed and manipulative cop Michael (Vijay Sethupati) heads a special task force (called CCFART, for the lulz, obviously) to bust the fake notes business in the country. Passionate RBI employee Megha (Raashi Khanna) joins this team, and has run-ins with the counterfeiter. On these three linchpins hangs a narrative with multiple turns and an end-of-season showdown.

I had significant expectations from Farzi, as it came from the stable of Raj & DK, the makers of the Family Man series as well as entertaining movies like 99, Shor in the City, A Gentleman etc (For now let's ignore Go Goa Gone and Happy Ending). But the first episode had me seriously wondering if the burden of simultaneously taking on multiple series had severely stretched out the creative juices of these guys. What I like most about their work - across film and OTT - is their ability to mine individual personality quirks and regional subtleties that make their character writing memorable. In contrast, the bulk of Ep 1 was alarmingly generic and lacklustre. Thankfully, the further episodes picked up the slack, and while the best parts of Family Man are superior to anything we see here, this is still a well-made piece of entertainment.

The casting is terrific across the board. Vijay Sethupati in his Hindi debut gives non-Tamilians a taste of his trademark irreverent style - his peppery exchanges with Zakir Hussain's minister character are a joy to behold. And Michael is suited to the actor's ability to deliver layered portrayals. Michael loves his job, but it's more an ego trip for him than the selfless "desh-seva" mantra that Family Man's good guys had. He is also fairly flexible in his principles, using seized fake notes to buy his son a fancy phone or emotionally manipulating his wife to hold off the impending divorce. Like they did for Priyamani and Samantha in Family Man, Raj & DK continue their mission of giving meaningful parts to Telugu movie 'import glamdolls' - this time it's Raashi Khanna and Regina Cassandra, as the counterfeit-hunting RBI employee and Sethupati's estranged spouse respectively. The talented but often typecast Kay Kay Menon is in cracking form as mid-level fake currency operator Mansoor Dalaal - in both the writing and his performance, the character gets a delightful amount of nuance that separates him from the stereotype gangster/bhai.

In comparison to the more colorful cast members Shahid Kapur's 'Artist' is very tamped down. But this is deliberate - Like the protagonist of Johnny Gaddaar, his character is supposed to be one that flies under everyone's radar. He succeeds when underestimated. But there is also the flip side - he is a cocky fool that gets into shitholes by aggrandizing himself as a playah when he is really a 'lukkhaa' surviving by the seat of his pants with no real strategy. The actor bravely embraces the essential amorality of Sunny and delivers exactly what is needed.

Compared to Family Man's several audacious action sequences peppered through the series, this one mainly comes alive in the chase sequence amidst Mumbai traffic in the last episode (there is a fair amount of action before, but that's more competent than exhilarating). But thankfully, unlike FM S01's brutally abrupt ending, this one has a reasonably satisfying series arc while setting up hooks for the next season. I look forward to them upping the ante.

Un-kvlt Year in Review 2022 (Movies) - The Runner-Ups and the Losers

After the previous 3 Un-kvlt installments where I talked about the movies that rocked my boat in 2022 - Ep 01, Ep 02 and Ep 03 - These are the ones that either didn't quite make the cut or disappointed me big time.

Movies that were decent (Cliched but solid, or ambitious but seriously flawed):

Candyman (English, Prime)

The presence of Jordan Peele in the creative team for the 2021 Candyman reboot was a major attraction, since his presence at least indicated that this would not be some thoughtless cash-in on a known IP. Candyman 2021 is not a traditional remake, but in fact a sequel that incorporates into its backstory the events of the 1992 movie and revisits the setting nearly 30 years later. For me the film works a lot better on paper than on the screen. One of its problems is trying to depict a wide-ranging take on race prejudice within its fantasy universe in a very limited time-frame. The film does get stronger in the climax, where it more fully realizes its horror potential. But even here, it does not reach the heights of the original, losing some of its majesty and mystique in favor of being a social justice cry. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

'83 (Hindi, Netflix/Hotstar)

The story of how the Indian cricket team under Kapil Dev's captaincy went from being complete underdogs to winning the World Cup in 1983 is an incredible and inspiring saga. Sadly director Kabir Khan and his team barely do it justice. The screenplay defines lack of focus, reducing what could have been a gripping tale of courage under fire to a collage of mostly forgettable moments and some puerile patriotic jingo. A small measure of cheer comes from Ranveer Singh's uncannily faithful portrayal of Kapil Dev, but if the aim had been to make an Indian equivalent to Chariots of Fire, then they certainly dropped the ball on this. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

Malayan Kunju (Malayalam, Prime)

This survival saga starring maverick actor Fahadh Faasil is a film of 2 uneven halves. The first is a dragged-out anemic prologue lacking sufficient richness in the narrative to justify the build-up. Thankfully though, this is followed by a superbly executed gripping and visceral second half, masterfully captured by the production crew and performed by Faasil with complete involvement. A shorter, tighter film with less backstory (and less of AR Rahman's spoon-feeding score) would have been a total winner. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

KGF-2 (Kannada, Prime)
The 4-year delayed follow-up to 2018's breakout success gangster drama continues the swagger, and even takes it a notch higher. This is a movie where our gangsta hero can among other things:

• Barge in unannounced into the Prime Minister's working chambers and swag at her, while she hisses ineffectively.
• Have a helicopter hovering above his lawn when his fiancee whines about the lack of breeze.
• Single-handedly assault a police station with a large caliber machine gun to recover a single gold biscuit.

The film's canvas feels genuinely big, and while the strokes are broad, they are also unabashedly virile, with some epic visual moments. What I would criticize is the deja vu occurring over the course of this two-part narrative. The danger of painting in broad strokes is always that there's not sufficient detailing for the characters. A lengthy symphony cannot be composed solely of overtures, and this is where KGF-2 flounders. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

Kaun Pravin Tambe? (Hindi, Hotstar)

Actor Shreyas Talpade, who debuted as a budding cricketer in Iqbal, returns as another underdog trying to make it in cricket. This is the true-life story of Pravin Tambe, a club cricketer who persevered with the game despite not being selected for any national tournament up to his 40's, which is when most sportspeople start to talk about retirement. KPT? has some nice Sai Paranjpe style touches in depicting the Tambe family's lower middle class life and Pravin's struggle to hold various jobs while continuing with cricket. The script is formulaic and most of the characters are etched in broad strokes. But if you like cricket in general, I thought this was better than those bigger-budget cricket movies. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

X (English, Prime)

In X, an amateur movie crew in 70's Texas go to shoot a porno movie on a remote farm owned by a strange and surly looking guy. This is like director Ti West's post Rob Zombie world take on Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is in some parts good fun, with some canny split-screen juxtaposition and some nice humor, in others it's uninspired or eye-rolling stupid. Since it's Ti West, you know there's going to be a lot of visual nods to the period. It's not a classic but it's not a bad choice for a popcorn movie night. Definitely more engaging than The Innkeepers.

Nna Thaan Case Kodu (Malayalam, Hotstar)

NTCK got a lot of hype, but I didn't find it engaging. This satire tries to take a leaf from Chaitanya Tamhane's Court in capturing the rhythms of a legal proceeding and infusing it with some legal-political farce elements. It is effective in parts. Kunchako Boban's lead is the best element, creating a credible character even when the goings-on around him aren't especially so. But the film meanders a good deal, and sometimes it feels that humorous elements have been forced in to maintain a certain tone. This could have been an entertaining farce at about 100min. At nearly an hour more, the appeal is significantly diminished.

Prey (English, Hotstar)
This new feature in the Predator franchise goes back in time to the 18th century, with a native American protagonist, played by an actual Native American Amber Midthunder. I think the best thing about Prey is that it doesn't spend too much time building the mythology or connecting to previous installments in the franchise. It's never particularly memorable, but it's breezy and has a fair amount of old-skool action. Overall, not a bad way of passing time. 

Movies that sucked / I didn't care for:

Bheeshma Parvam (Malayalam, Hotstar)

This Mammootty starrer directed by Amal Neerad is not as infuriatingly dumb as Mohanlal's film Lucifer, but there's a lot to be desired for in this umpteenth desi take on The Godfather series. BP is less a movie and more a collection of visual and narrative elements the maker fetishizes over. The camera zooms and pans over a medley of 1980's era-specific inanimate objects for no reason other than that Neerad wants to show you how much he was invested in the production design. Inversely the writing is devoid of detail and texture, and emotional moments are negated by a creative sensibility more concerned with the period paraphernalia than the characters. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

Kadaisi Vivasayi aka The Last Farmer (Tamil, SonyLiv)

My favorite Indian movie critic Baradwaj Rangan's enthusiastic review of The Last Farmer suggested an "organic" humanist narrative with an ecological bent. My viewing at the cinema however had me wincing at what I thought was a homily-dropping "arid" slog, hard to "plough" through, and with only few redeeming elements, like Vijay Sethupati's wandering hermit character. Only recommended if you really missed the farming tips from those agricultural programs on Indian National television in the 80's.

Chup: Revenge of the Artist (Hindi)

A mystery film where movie critics are being bumped off by a mysterious killer. Director R. Balki may be a deep lover of ‘cinema’, I don’t know. But in this thriller that's really more filler, what I see is the reduction of that love to some shallow 'reference' scenes that serve as rare quirky respite in a trainwreck narrative with wafer-thin characters and zero emotional engagement. About the only time I whole-heartedly cheered in this movie was when 90's Bollywood's angry hero Sunny Deol yelled out his favorite catchphrase, "Bastard!". Instead of 'Chup' they might as well have called it 'Dabba', which would have served as both reference to the celluloid cans we see in the film AND a pertinent self-critique of its hubris.

Vikram (Tamil, Hotstar)

Lokesh Kanagaraj's previous action drama Kaithi was entertaining masala that had an organic build-up and made you feel for the main characters, so even the exaggerations towards the end could be taken in stride. Vikram is the opposite, so labored and contrived it is sad to think it came from the same guy. The effortless flow and interlocking of scenes in Kaithi is replaced by a jerky unstable narrative that struggles to do justice to its star lineup. The action has the same jerky quality as the writing. If anything Vikram is proof that all this talk about Bollywood films failing  before South movies because people want better content is BS, because I can't imagine anyone that cheers for this bilge having particularly high standards in cinematic entertainment. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

I'm not primarily a series watcher (either on TV or Streaming), because I find it hard to give the time commitment, but I did happen to catch these and you may find them interesting.

TV Series / Mini-series:

The Devil's Hour (English, Prime)

This mini-series on Prime where a suspected serial killer is connected with a single mother and her emotionally-diverse child is a sort of Silence of the Lambs meets The Sixth Sense meets Groundhog Day. The characters have intense obsessive personalities and dark secrets, the crime scenes are gruesome and no one is allowed to feel happy for long. But at the same time it's not misanthropic and does have a sense of humor. On the whole, it is cliched and contrived, but still nicely polished and frequently effective. Fans of mystery/horror dramas can definitely give it a shot. (Reviewed on this site HERE)

As We See It (English, Prime)

The first 8-episode season of this series deals with the lives of 3 adults on the autistic spectrum in very different ways. The three share an apartment where they are guided towards becoming more independent by a behavioral therapist who is the other main character. Autism is a difficult topic as the central theme of a series. To keep things palatable to a general audience, the writing remains on the side of heart-warming when it showcases the troubles faced by the autistics, and the people around who are affected by their behavior. There is a certain amount of pat problem solving and "Love conquers all" element, but I suspect anything else would make it a downbeat niche kind of show. On the whole, quite watchable.

The Devil's Hour [Tom Moran]

Over the course of a week, I finished watching this 6-episode mini-series called The Devil's Hour (TDH, currently showing on Amazon Prime). It can be loosely described as Silence of the Lambs meets The Sixth Sense meets Groundhog Day. Check the Vlog to see my take on it. If you prefer reading to watching, the full transcript is given below the video:

Our protagonist Lucy (Jessica Raine) is a social worker and single mother who balances her job of counseling assorted abuse victims with a troubled home-life; her son Isaac (Benjamin Chivers) is a cipher, almost always silent, and curiously devoid of any emotion. While Lucy's husband Mark would like dearly to get her back in his life, he is far less enthusiastic about the son; with cruel sarcasm he refers to the latter as a "psychopath in the making".

Lucy also has a senile mother who watches television with the power off and talks to people that aren't there. And oh, it appears that Lucy wakes up every night exactly at 3.33am. This is evidenced by a bedside clock that glows a ridiculously bright purple; to me the bigger mystery here is how she manages to fall asleep with that light in her face.

On another story-thread detective-inspector Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel) - whose schtick is retching at crime scenes and listening to the Beach Boys while studying them (hold on!). Along with his intensely Scottish cop buddy Nick Holness (Alex Ferns), Ravi is on the trail of a random series of murders and abductions, which hint at a diabolical serial killer. Together they discover that the murderer is in some way connected to Lucy and Isaac.

These two tracks are frequently interrupted by a series of scenes set at an unspecified time in an interrogation cell, where a bruised Ravi and Lucy are talking to a rather sinister, murderous looking character called Gideon (Peter Capaldi of Doctor Who fame).

The overall tone of TDH is what I call "Netflix Dark" - the characters have intense obsessive personalities and dark secrets, the crime scenes are gruesome and if a character smiles, you can be sure that smile will be wiped out before long. That said, it is not all misanthropic and it does have a sense of humor, which goes some way to making the atmosphere less miserable. It also helps that the actors fit their parts really well. Jessica Raine is empathetic as the single mother protagonist, but special mention must be made of child actor Benjamin Chivers, with his beautifully modulated depiction of the almost android-like Isaac. Capaldi and Nikesh Patel also embody their parts well.

For most of the season, TDH's narrative jumps around in time in a manner that is distracting, without making itself clear. Individual episodes have some strong moments but there are also seemingly random dream logic segments. It is in the final episode that the underlying concept is revealed, for which the clues had been strewn before. Without going too far into spoiler territory, this is where the Groundhog Day element dominates in a very far-reaching way. It calls for a significant suspension of disbelief, and renders certain characters and sub-plots less important than they initially seemed. How much that conceit appeals to you is a matter of individual taste. I thought it was decent, and they did go for a bold downer ending, which is not a return to status quo.

On the whole, TDH can be described as somewhat cliched and contrived. But it is also nicely polished and frequently effective. Fans of mystery/horror dramas might want to check it out, and it's only 6 hour long episodes.

Official trailer link:

Christ Stopped at Eboli [dir. Francesco Rosi]

Italian director Francesco Rosi made one of the best first impressions on me when I saw his film Salvatore Giuliano (reviewed on this site here), a propulsive docu-drama about a rebel who was hailed as a hero when he fought for the independence of Sicily and later became controversially implicated in the massacre of a gathering of communists. Hands over the City, while not as visceral, was still a strong indictment of the collusion of corruption between big business and government. Certain aspects of the plot seemed to have inspired parts of the classic Indian satire Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. On the other hand, Rosi's later output tended to more poetic / nostalgic features like Three Brothers (reviewed here) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

While it does have some criticism of a government that is fascist or does not bother to understand the lives of its less-privileged citizens, 1979's Christ Stopped at Eboli (CSAE, based on an autobiographical book by painter, intellectual and political prisoner Carlo Levi) falls more in the latter camp, being the sentimental study of an older, agrarian culture with its own rhythms and social hierarchies. Although CSAE was also shown as a significantly truncated 150-min film, it was originally a 4-Episode mini-series for the state-owned Radiotélévisione Italiana, totaling about 220 min. Gian Maria Volonté, famous abroad for his violent roles in the Dollars films and other spaghetti westerns, plays the soft-spoken Levi who at the beginning is seen coming into the remote part of southern Italy where he has been exiled by Rome.

Levi is treated with courtesy by the administration (led by the bureaucratic Mayor), but his movements and activities are restricted. A long ago degree in medicine comes to purpose when the villagers insist on consulting him, despite his protests of being inexperienced, because he is more intelligent and sincere than the local quacks. This is not a series packed with twists and turns and events of massive upheaval. The bulk of CSAE is about Levi being exposed to the local life and beliefs, and evolving his philosophy of how government and reform can actually help the people.

I haven't read the source novel but Rosi's film shows a strong strain of nostalgia for the old, "pure" ways. His camera lovingly caresses the rocky hills and the rough village roads. The people of this forgotten town may be poor and simple-minded, but they are good at heart and they respond to Levi's kindness, agitating for him to officially practice medicine in the village, even under threat of being attacked by the police. The moral of the film is that if we want to benefit someone we need to first examine and understand their way of life, and support it in the best way possible rather than impose a supposedly more progressive lifestyle and thinking upon them.

Dekalog [dir. Krysztof Kieslowski]

No, you're not going to find this on your favorite streaming channel (at least in India, although if you do, let me know so I can sign up too). Dekalog (or The Decalogue) was a 10-episode anthology serial made for Polish television in the late 80's by Krysztof Kieslowski (later known for The Double Life of Veronique and the Three Colors trilogy). It is predominantly set in a housing complex, and each hour-long episode is a self-contained that deals with one person / family. Dekalog is a loose reflection on the significance of the biblical Ten Commandments in modern existence.

By loosely, I mean that it's not easy to pigeonhole an episode as a rumination over a specific commandment. And that is as it should be, because life's moral dilemmas rarely come with convenient labels or pat resolutions. A wife demands to know if her critically ill husband will survive, because that will decide whether she keeps or aborts the child from a lover. A daughter may have found that the man she regards as her father may not be so; would that legitimize her incestuous feelings towards him? An impotent husband who suggests his wife take on a lover finds himself less equanimous when he discovers that she may have done so. A woman drags a former lover from his family on Christmas eve because she has been long abandoned by her husband and is jealous of having to spend that time of traditional joy alone. The most famous episode of Dekalog, and one of two that were expanded by the director to feature-length, deals with two killings - the first, in which a young man brutally strangles a cab-driver for no apparent reason, and the second, in which said young man is hanged by the state with apparently equal callousness. It is credited as being instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty in Poland.

Like the individual apartment blocks of a building complex, each episode is self-contained, yet contains strands that link it to other episodes. A lead character in one story may make a fleeting cameo appearance in another. The outline of one story may be referred to in passing elsewhere. The effect is to create a rich tapestry of this microcosm of a civilization. As with James Joyce's Dubliners or Rohinton Mistry's Tales from Firozesha Baag, the individual parts are worthy in themselves, but the sum is significantly greater.

For this of course, thematic unity becomes essential. This comes primarily from Kieslowski's direction. Originally the idea was that he and his co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz (a lawyer when Kieslowski met him in the course of conceiving a documentary on legal trials) would script the episode and leave the direction to young film-makers looking to prove their mettle. But as the project progressed, Kieslowski either grew more possessive or realized the power of the material, and helmed the whole anthology, giving it a unifying vision. His musical collaborator Zbigniew Preisner provides an additional emotional anchor with the minimal main theme and the haunting pieces for the individual episodes (abetted by the great "Van Den Budenmayer").

With ample justification, the series made Kieslowski's name internationally and gave him the opportunity to become the universally respected artist he deserved to be. Dekalog was and continues to be a landmark of what television could be when it is not geared to gratify instant cravings, when it is not the idiot-box.

Dracula [Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat]

When it comes to Dracula, you could say I'm something of a fan. I first read Bram Stoker's soaring horror adventure novel as a kid and have returned several times to enjoy at least the best bits. Then there were the many movie and TV adaptations, of which I have previously seen:

Nosferatu (1922) - FW Murnau

Dracula (1931) -  Tod Browning

Dracula / Horror of Dracula (1958) - Terence Fisher

Count Dracula (mini-series) (1977) - Philip Saville

Dracula (1979) - John Badham

Nosferatu (1979) - Werner Herzog

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) - Francis Coppola

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002) - Guy Maddin

There's also the Orson Welles radio drama adaptation, the interesting BBC radio pastiche Sherlock Holmes vs Dracula and that's not including the various sequels and spinoffs, and any vampire movies not specifically based on the Stoker book. With so much Drac-Koolaid consumed, it would take something out of the ordinary for another Dracula adaptation to make an impression. I was at the outset somewhat skeptical about the new mini-series from Messrs Gatiss and Moffat. I had grown disillusioned with their contemporary Sherlock series after the first season, preferring instead to watch Elementary, even though that one grew stale by repetition. But the sumptuous period production values, and the promise of Dracula as a ruthless monster rather than a wimpy lover made me give in.

Dracula (2020) begins at a place where you think you know where you are, with an enervated Jonathan Harker recalling the harrowing events of his time with the sanguinary count, but soon shows that it is happy to jigger around and throw in new elements to surprise even the jaded Dracula fan. Such revision is of course a two-edged sword, but at least across two of the three episodes, the writing provides a brave and fun re-working of Stoker's novel. Sister Agatha who is but a bit player in the book is now a major character that takes on Dracula himself in a war of wit and tactics. Other major characters are modified, truncated or eliminated as per the script's demands. The iconic chapter of Dracula's preying on the Demeter ship is rendered like a tense variation on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

The third and final episode is probably what will divide most die-hard fans. It involves a major transition that may or may not work. While I feel it could have been done better, I was certainly not put off by the shift. The conclusion draws inspiration from both Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu and Terence Fisher's 1958 Dracula and even in its not-quite-satisfactory way, manages to pull off a different spin on the typical "destruction of the vampire" climax.

I have spoken of boldness of the writing, but of equal importance is the excellent lead acting talent, mainly Claes Bang as Dracula and Dolly Wells as Sister Agatha. There is a constant stream of trendy quipping and dark humor, but the character of Dracula is almost never trivialized as a threat, which is crucial to the lasting power of the original work. The scenes depicting period Europe look excellent in the way that a high-budget series does, with sweeping vistas, moodily lit interiors and gorgeous dream sequences. Dracula doesn't skimp on the blood, but doesn't overdo it either, concentrating on being a character-driven adventure saga than a gore-fest. Given the way they ended this I doubt there's any real scope for a second season, but this was worth my while, and possibly even a re-visit. Pass me some more of that red stuff.

Jack the Ripper - 1988 mini-series [dir. David Wickes]

1988's Jack the Ripper (JtR) made an impression on me when I saw it as a kid on Indian TV where it was screened in its original 2 part mini-series avatar, possibly in the same year or only slightly after its UK premiere. It was possibly the first time I'd heard of the killer although now I can't be sure (because around the time I also had a World's Greatest Serial Killers book. Like the Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett, this was another prestige production from British TV, shot on 35mm film with handsome production design recreating Gaslight London, and thereby rendered immediately attractive to me. Childhood favorites can often be disappointing from a more mature POV, so how does this one hold up?
This telling of JtR purports to be a researched account of the original killings and their investigation under Inspector Fredrick Abberline, with a preamble stating, “Our story is based on extensive research, including a review of the official files by special permission of the Home Office and interviews with leading criminologists and Scotland Yard officials.” As horror/fantasy specialist critic Richard Scheib points out in his (ha!) surgical dissection of the film, the claim is rather bogus. The writers are guilty of cherry-picking some facts of the affair, while ignoring others and exaggerating or outright inventing new elements for drama or sensation. While that is certainly a failing, as is a certain half-bakedness that comes from shoehorning characters simply to fit in US marquee friendly names (like Jane Seymour as a former flame of Abberline), the film manages to keep up pace and maintain interest. Without giving out spoilers, the solution offered in this interpretation is even less convincing than the Freemason conspiracy. But unlike the aggravating movie they made of From Hell, JtR manages to be entertaining. Michael Caine is a sturdy Abberline (even if they invent a drinking problem for the character and seem to cram in unnecessary shouting scenes to make him earn his star-actor's paycheck). The production design and Alan Hume's cinematography bring the period to life and editor Keith Palmer does a good job of keeping the momentum going.

Network's 2-blu-ray set contains the entire 2-episode airing on the first disc in the original 4:3 aspect ratio with authentic lossless stereo. The image (based off a fresh 2K scan of original materials) looks quite good, supportive of the textures of the production and Hume's evocative visuals of night-time Victorian London. On rare occasions the accents can slightly obscure a line but optional English subtitles are present for any such difficulties. There are about 20 mins of extras of a previous run for this project when it was going to be a lower budget videotape production with another actor (Barry Foster) playing Abberline - After American producers showed interest it was remounted as a lavish 35mm production and Michael Caine was solicited as a star name. The second disc (which I haven't yet seen contains a re-edit of the series as a single film, framed for 16:9 widescreen with specially commissioned 5.1 audio. I might give it a look on some future occasion.

Russian Sherlock Holmes aka Приключения Шерлока Холмса и доктора Ватсона

Ah yes, that's Russian for Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, the early to mid-80's Russian tele-film series that was apparently one of the cornerstones of entertainment in erstwhile Mother Russia. I had heard of this series some time ago, especially the high praise given to Vasily Livanov's portrayal of Holmes and the faithfulness to the original stories. In Moscow they have a statue of Holmes and Watson (Vitaly Solomin) cast in the likeness of the actors from this series, and Vasily was given an honorary OBE.

At long last I have an opportunity to actually try this out. I just saw the first episode (An Acquaintance), which takes the meeting of Holmes and Watson from A Study in Scarlet, then nicely segues into the plot of The Speckled Band. I can understand the logic behind that since the plot of A Study... is too lengthy to be respectably contained in an hour-long episode, and this provides a nice complete-in-itself introduction to our Baker Street companions. If the quality of the first episode is any indication, the production values are quite nice with a modest but pleasing representation of Victorian London (actually shot in Russia).

Of course, what would interest many of you is the portrayal of the lead characters. Sherlock Holmes fans have read the original stories several times over and each has a crystallized image of the gaunt detective and his loyal "friend and colleague". Many actors have portrayed Holmes in various adaptations, and Vasily Livanov's name can stand proud with them. Unlike most actors in the pre-Jeremy Brett era, including the respected Basil Rathbone and Peter Cushing, who portrayed Holmes as a brisk rather chummy avuncular chap, Vasily brings languor, moodiness and a hint of arrogance to his performance. It's not the full-blown baroque theatrics with which Jeremy Brett would astound and endear himself to Sherlock Holmes fans and redefine their image of the character, but it is interesting. Dr. Watson is also in good form at least in this first episode. His initial reaction to Holmes is one of suspicion and antipathy, and at one point, don't ask me how, they have an indoor boxing bout. While they get around rather soon after that, I am hoping this is an indication the Watson of this series will not be a mute spectator or a bumbling clown. I will get back when I have sampled more of the series but this is an auspicious beginning.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a pretty good film once it got underway. Oh yes, it takes its own sweet while to get there; the leisurely non-dramatic build-up may put some off and I won't blame them. There are several unannounced timeline shifts that require you to keep attentive track of what's going on. Also the film is, at least from my theatrical experience, shot in low contrast extremely dim lighting, possibly as a visual analogy to the murky goings-on of the plot. Gary Oldman heads the cast, which is mainly other Old Men (hur-hur); oh and there's Sherlock too, Benedict Cumberbatch, this time with blond hair. Most of them give fine performances (and Gary has a cracker scene mid-way where he talks about an encounter with the film's main nemesis), but John Hurt once again phones in - it's almost hard to believe now that he once brilliantly essayed The Elephant Man and Winston in the Michael Radford adaptation of 1984. The whodunit revelation at the end isn't particularly dramatic or meaningful, but this was a good diversion from the normal sort of film that shows up on screens here. The question now is, should I actually read any of that John Le Carre stuff?

Update: So I did see the 1979 TV mini-series with Alec Guiness playing George Smiley. There are definitely a great many of the usual advantages offered by the longer running time (Seven 45-min episodes). The story feels more coherent in its fleshed out avatar (no need for clumsy visual devices, like chess pieces with pictures of the suspects pasted over them), and many of the characters like Peter Guillam, Ricki Tarr and Jim Prideaux have some dimension here, unlike the cardboard dogsbodies of the film. Alexander Knox's solid performance as Control further exposes John Hurt's turn for the disgrace it is. There are more visual cues for each location shift (Tarr's stint in Lisbon comes off immensely better in terms of generating a different atmosphere) and it also helps that that there are none of the unannounced timeline jumps that made the 2011 feature a little hard to keep up with. But, blame my attention span, I still can't say I have the answers to all the stuff that happens in the plot. I won't discuss them here for fear of spoiling it for other unfamiliar with this watchable series - and very watchable it is, I'd intended to do one episode a day but ended up watching the last 3 without a break.

Which is not to say that everything in the series is better than in the film. For a crucial scene where Smiley encounters his Russian nemesis Karla, the film had Smiley simply recounting the incident to Guillam while the TV series gives us a flashback of the event....and it is the former approach that works better for me. It is one of those iconic moments which loses a little in actual presentation. As for Smiley, it's a toss-up between Alec Guiness' and Gary Oldman's performances. Both of them do a very fine job, with their personal auras bringing a wee different perspective to how you see the character. Alec is all old-world gentility and order, which makes it easier to accept how he is underestimated by his rivals. On the other hand, Gary brings a greater innate steel to the character that makes it more natural to see why the young hounds under his command would jump to do his bidding. Whatever your preference, each approach is enjoyable on its own merits.

Food pr0n

So of late I started watching some food oriented shows. I don't watch shows to learn how to actually cook stuff and so I am more interested in programs where the host takes culinary excursions and discovers different cuisines or eating locations. The Keith Floyd shows on BBC used to be a huge favorite of mine. Floyd had the lovable asshole part down pat, so even if you thought some of his own attempts at cooking were just random stir-fry stuff with liberal (really liberal) lashings of alcohol, his enthusiasm at roaming markets and food stalls and mooching on other people's food made for fun viewing.

Getting back I sat through an entire 18-episode run of this Travel Channel show called Man v. Food. MvF can very literally be described as food porn. The food here is of the greasy variety (I like cheese in general, but the ubiquity of said item here is staggering). The aesthetics of presentation are variable - more often than not dishes are created in slap-one-thing-over-another mode. The focus is hugely on quantity - most of the places featured on this show pile enough onto a plate to fill  at least two normal-sized servings. We do know that thanks to this culture of excess the US produces an alarming number of obese people (a third of its population or more) and trashes enough food to feed probably several African nations. If you're a vegetarian, avoid this one at all counts because I doubt if apart from the dessert oriented stuff, there was a single item that did not involve the death of mammal / bird / sea creature. Several of them featured kilos of flesh food.

So why? Well, I do happen to like my meat and there were many moments of drool at seeing various fleshy grills and sandwiches and pies (although you'll never convince me that fried hotdogs covered in melted cheese and snuggled into raspberry jam coated rolls are have anything other than gross-out value). Secondly, MvF has a great host in Adam Richman. The format of the show is that in each episode, Richman visits a different city/town, checks out the recommended local pig-out places and lastly takes on a local food challenge, which is typically to consume X humongous amount of food or some insanely spicy dish (chicken wings seem a favorite in this category, since I recall at least 2 episodes where he downs batches of super-hot wings). Surprisingly Richman's not some obscenely fat mouth-breather - if you check up on trivia for the show, he seems to maintain a pretty healthy lifestyle outside of the show and exercises religiously during program shoot schedules. He is boisterous and fun-seeking, but also exudes a humbleness and genuine liking for new people and places that keeps his act from crossing over into prick-like behavior. After a while, there's little novelty left in the food and the challenges get mononous, and it's really his enthusiasm and sense of humor that keeps one moving over to the next 20 min (without ad breaks) episode. Should I bother to check out Season 2? Apparently he meets Alice Cooper in one of the episodes. Hmmm....

I also watched one episode of No Reservations, which like MvF is another Travel Channel program. Host Anthony Bourdain is more in the Keith Floyd vein, traveling to different countries to see and taste their cultures. I saw an episode where he visits Kerala. This was fun. Bourdain meets up with Indians happy to host the camera-crew escorted gora-saab interested in "Indeeyan Culture", and has a good time, be it pigging out at roadside food stalls in Kochi, attending a traditional "saddhi" feast or giving himself to inertia and gluttony along the backwaters. He even wrangles entry into a Mammooty film set and gets invited to share the superstar's lunch. Bourdain makes the typical firang remarks about the complexity of Indian culture and the continued existence of the caste system, but he's pretty alright as a host - curious but traveled enough to not be gullible or cloyingly polite. He's also more cautious than Floyd about getting drunk and doing something stupidly embarrassing (which was part of Floyd's charm, to be frank). I'll definitely be checking out a few more episodes of this stuff.

A Touch of Frost etc.

I'm not a big fan of serials in general and some of my friends would shake their heads in derision at my not keeping up with their respective favorite series. Especially sitcoms are something I just don't find a great appetite for.


But one thing I like watching in general is detective stuff. Admittedly this has mainly boiled down to watching / listening to different adaptations of Sherlock Holmes - Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Jeremy (the best) Brett. Recently I started watching this 90's Brit series called A Touch of Frost. William "Jack" Frost (David Jason) is an aging police detective with a disdain for protocol and a passion for justice, something like a more mellow middle-aged non-trigger happy Dirty Harry...that drinks tea and says "luv". Each episode (which at 100 min long is like a film in itself) shows Frost coming to grips with a rash of crimes that later turn out to be related or the other way, a seemingly connected series of foul doings that are resolved as individual incidents.

I've been through two Seasons now, which makes for a sum of seven 100 min episodes (there are 15 seasons apparently, the last one ended early this year. Golly, that long-running?). Thankfully the stories are self-contained and don't REQUIRE to be seen in sequence. The connecting factor is Frost himself and his interactions with his colleagues, mainly his sparring banter with the paperwork-and-appearances focused Supdt. Mullet. Frost's personal life is touched upon briefly - his long ailing wife (that he was cheating on) who dies at the end of the first episode and Frost's attempts to reconcile himself with the tragedy and get on with life. All kept to a thankful minimum. Every now and then Frost will be saddled with a new deputy - a demoted former inspector with a chip, a black man in an episode about racial tension, a woman with an unconventional sexual preference. But the focus is mainly on the crime(s) of the episode and the resolving of it. There is a nice variation of themes in different episodes as Frost gets to investigate a smorgasbord of criminal activities. There is some talk of short-staffing but even so, it seems a little dubious that he gets called in for just about everything that turns up. Ah well, dramatic license.

The standard of acting is pretty good, with several of the individual episode characters coming across as more than just reservoirs of information. The unraveling of each episode's mystery provides a generally plausible conclusion, although a drawback of that may be that there are few surprises. The pace might get leisurely for those used to more contemporary serials with breakneck editing. At least in the period of the seasons I've seen there is no use of the internet and (clunky) mobile phones are rare too. Gunplay is rare. We see a good deal of old-fashioned investigation and teamwork. I like this sort of stuff.

So yea, this is what I've been seeing. If you have any other detective serials to recommend to me, go ahead...but not the ones where I need to see 15 episodes just to get the story.