The Great Indian Murder Season 1 Review: Author Vikas Swarup gained global attention when his novel Q & A was adapted as Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, that went on to earn Oscar glory. Seeing as Bollywood always go for trends, I was surprised that it took Bollywood 14 years to look for author's works for an inspiration for a movie or a show. That happened finally, as Tigmanshu Dhulia adapts Swarup's second best-selling novel, Six Suspects, that incidentally came the same year as Slumdog Millionaire, as the web-series The Great Indian Murder for Disney+ Hotstar. As the name suggests, it is a murder mystery involving the killing of Vicky Rai, a sadistic son of an ambitious politician, that involves several suspects who had their own reasons to kill him. Kinda like with Ratchett in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. The Great Indian Murder Series: Review, Cast, Plot, Trailer, Streaming Date and Time – All You Need to Know About Richa Chadha, Pratik Gandhi’s Disney+ Hotstar Thriller Show.

Like Boyle did with Slumdog Millionaire, Dhulia and his writing partners, Vijay Maurya and Puneet Sharma, have taken creative liberties with Six Suspects and made certain narrative changes without changing the names and the role briefs of certain main characters. Like for example, in the novel, Vicky Rai is accused of manslaughter when, inspired by the real-life Jessica Lal murder case, he shoots down a girl with witnesses present.

In the series, Vicky Rai (played by excellent despicability by Jatin Goswami)  is accused of raping and killing two minor girls whose bodies were found in his car. After three years and plenty of bribes, the prosecution fails to prove his crimes and Rai walks out a free man. However, he made plenty of enemies in the process, and one of them murders him on the night of the party that Rai has arranged to celebrate his acquittal at his farmhouse.

Two main characters are written specifically for the series - police officer Sudha Bharadwaj (Richa Chadha) and CBI officer Suraj Yadav (Pratik Gandhi) -  so that through their (warped) investigation, the series has a more straightforward narrative.

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Unlike the title of the novel, the needle of suspicion when it comes to the cops, there are only three suspects, two of them caught with guns at the party itself. One of them is Munna (Shashank Arora), a mobile thief, and the other is Eketi (Mani PR), a tribal from Andamans who is in search of his revered idol Engetai that had been stolen. The third suspect that comes later in the picture for the cops is bureaucrat Mohan Kumar (Raghubir Yadav), a self-proclaimed Gandhian, who suffers from split personality after a freak accident.

The audience is also privy to two more suspects that the cops are yet to narrow down, which might happen in the next season, if and when that happens. There is Jagannath Rai (Ashutosh Rana), Vicky's own father, who believes his son's demise might further his own political career. And then there is Shabnam Saxena (Paoli Dam), who has a public beef with Vicky. The sixth suspect, going by the novel, is never given much focus in the series, apart from a couple of fleeting scenes.

Apart from these, a couple of other characters that you know of is Arun Deshmukh (Amey Wagh), who appears as a mysterious vlogger covering the Vicky Rai news (he had a bigger role in the novel going by the name Arun Advani there), Ashok Rajput (Sharib Hashmi), a welfare officer who tries to help Eketi and Ritu Rai (Rucha Inamdar), Vicky's half-sister who hates him to the core.

Like with Hotstar's own Human and other shows like Pataal Lok and Sacred Games, The Great Indian Murder isn't an uplifting show. The most hateful character in the series may be dead by the end of the first episode, but his demise allows other characters to show off their greys in the process. The show is actually divided into corrupt and the victims, with no proper protagonist to follow. Sudha is somewhat less corrupt of the officials, but she doesn't get to do much till the second half of the series, and Arun Deshmukh, who keeps targetting the powerful, is sparingly used. The Great Indian Murder: Richa Chadha Lauds Ajay Devgn for His Foresight on the Culture of OTT and Bringing Together the Show.

Without a proper focal point character to lead on, it is a little difficult to assimilate the proceedings in the first few episodes. Each episode does go for one or two main characters' POV, but the troubles of translation from page to screen are evident here. Especially since Six Suspects follows an unconventional narrative structure.The Great Indian Murder gets three things right, though -  it makes us hate Vicky Rai hate enough to be invested about who killed him, surround him with people with interestingly surreptitious intentions and rope in a great set of actors. Otherwise, the first three episodes are just about okay.

When you talk about good shows of the past, there is one episode that elevates from decent to great. In some shows like Breaking Bad and Lost, the episode comes in the pilot itself. In some other shows, that episode arrives later, like Game of Thrones found its brilliance in the shocking ninth episode. I won't bracket The Great Indian Murder with these shows (though it did have the potential to be with them which the show doesn't fully utilise), there still comes one episode that elevated the series in my eyes.

And that is the fourth episode that focuses on the tragic Eketi who leaves the confines of his island and find himself a victim of greed, malice and corruption in the bad mainlands. The writing is strong in the episode, as we get a character to really care about. Another really good episode is the one that puts Raghubir Yadav's Mohan Kumar in the spotlight, the actor is absolutely bonkers in the role. While there is cliched writing involved in his arc, Shashank Arora shines well in the latter portions of the series, when Munna suffers from an emotional breakdown.

The show also finds enough momentum from Eketi's episode onwards, with Richa Chadha's Sudha becoming a sort of focal character, even though she has her own grey side, while Pratik Gandhi's negative turn as the opportunistic CBI officer becomes one-note after a point. If you have not read the novel, there is also a possibility that you would be clueless as to why the series is putting a couple of main characters in the sidelines, case in point, Paoli Dam's Shabnam. The show also does well in trying to scratch the heartbreaking social divide in this country, till it feels raw and painful, but then we have other shows in the same stratosphere do so as well, perhaps with a better impact.

There is a season 2 coming to tie up the loose ends, but the finale of The Great Indian Murder is yet another proof that Indian web-series don't know how to make a good conclusion with a well-executed cliffhanger (Netflix's Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein is a rare exception). Cliffhanger is here as well, yet it is so abruptly dropped after an underwhelming series of events in the last episode that it left me annoyed rather than interested in what's lying ahead.

Yay!

- The Middle Episodes

- The Performances

Nay!

- The Start is Okay and the Finale is Underwhelming

- Inconsistent Momentum

Final Thoughts

The Great Indian Murder has a captivating central mystery, a set of fantastic actors and a couple of terrific episodes that elevate the whole show. The tone gets bleak much often and the structure isn't consistent, but it leaves you invested nevertheless. The first season of The Great Indian Murder is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 04, 2022 10:04 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).