Paurashpur Review: Milind Soman and Shilpa Shinde’s Erotic Web-Series Dons Feminism to Serve Semi-Naked Bodies and Boring Sex Scenes (LatestLY Exclusive)

Paurashpur Review: There are lot of things that Paurashpur, ALTBalaji and Zee5's new web-series, aims to be. It wants to be the platforms' answer to (snicker... snicker...) Game of Thrones. It wants to invoke the spirit of Mira Nair's Kamasutra. Paurashpur also adds in a bit of The Mask of Zorro and then some of Chandrakanta. And of course, it also takes the sleaze of some of those bold ALTBalaji shows. Why, it even borrows Robin Hood: Men in Tights' idea of having a woman's bottom shrouded in a locked metal underwear! In the vague attempt of mixing everything up, what we get is a laughably bad show that is neither arresting nor sexy enough. OTT Releases Of The Week: Shilpa Shinde’s Paurashpur, Arjun Rampal’s Nail Polish on ZEE5, Cobra Kai Season 3 on Netflix and More.

As the title denotes, the web-series is set in a kingdom called Paurashpur. And as that name suggests, it is a pretty misogynistic place where the women in the kingdom  are nothing more than slaves made to serve the men's desire for flesh. Paurashpur is ruled by a sleazy and tyrannical king Bhadrapratap (Annu Kapoor), whose sexual drive is insatiable. Even if he suffers from performance issues. He lives in a huge palatial mansion, that seems to have borrowed from Raichand's from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.

Bhadrapratap has a problem though. Save for his main queen, Meeramati (Shilpa Shinde), none of his other queens stick with him. They are kidnapped in mysterious manners with no clue of their whereabouts, while rumours are strife that he had been killing them. Bhadrapratap's children have their own intimacy issues, while Meeramati is striving hard for her survival, making sure the king isn't angry enough to chop her head off.

The king is wary of only one person in his kingdom - the kinnar Boris (Milind Soman), who runs a brothel where he trains women in errr... kalaripayattu, so that they can serve their customers better. Why, exactly is the king scared, don't ask. Even the show refuses to answer that, even if it allows the king to heap insults at Boris not being a man. Also, there is a shrouded man going around attacking the king's soldiers.

Watch the Trailer:

Directed by Shachindra Vats, Paurashpur has lofty ambitions for sure. It wants to be bold and beautiful. It wants to be erotic and it also wants to be feminist. It wants to dazzle you visually, and lure you sexually. Perhaps, the last factor might be the reason why most of the patrons would want to check out Paurashpur.

Plotwise, Paurashpur may want to deceive you about being a saga of women escaping the bonds of sexual trappings set by men and express themselves freely. While it fails to be anything of that sort, the series does serve scenes after scenes of skimpily clad beauties in various states of undress. For the female gaze, you do get Milind Soman's sculpted body in quite a few occasions. It is another matter that none of them, when dressed up, looks anything that belong to the era in which the series is supposed to be set in. Even the numerous sex scenes are hardly bold or boundary-pushing - ALTBalaji's other shows are bolder in comparison.

When erotica is failing, the flaws in the other aspects of the show become even more discernible. Paurashpur is poorly edited, written and directed, needing to rely on a narrator to explain things throughout. We hardly understand the motivations of most of the main characters, while character development is hardly there. And the various GoT influences only manage to irk you more!

The handling is so bad that some of the emotions scenes end up being unintentionally hilarious. Like that one scene, where Bhadrapratap's gay son discovers that his lover has been killed and then does a Sufi dance around his corpse. It should have been a gut-wrenching moment, but I just couldn't stop myself from cracking a smile.

The performances range from hammy (Annu Kapoor) to struggling (Shilpa Shinde) to plain bad (most of the supporting cast). Popular television actor Shaheer Sheikh is wasted in a cameo. The only notable act is provided by Milind Soman, who generates some sparks of interest as Little Finger... I mean, Boris. Shaheer Sheikh Reveals the Moment He Realised Ruchikaa Kapoor Was the One for Him and It’s All Mushy!

Even the art direction is merely passable, despite being spear-headed by the fame Nitin Chandrakant Desai. The camerawork is also inconsistent - at times, it tries to glitter up the proceedings, and then at one time, it suddenly turns the series into a First Person Video game!

Yay!

- Milind Soman, somewhat

Nay!

- Everything Else

Final Thoughts

Neither bold nor beautiful enough, Paurashpur is what we get if an ALTBalaji show decides to go in costume for a Game of Thrones convention but gets kicked out of there for gate-crashing. Forget dragons and dungeons, what we get here is Annu Kapoor scolding his little 'dragon' in a water-tub filled with flower petals! If that's your scene (shudder!), then check out Paurashpur on both Zee5 and ALTBalaji. At your own risk!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 30, 2020 07:07 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).