Shubhra Gupta

With the catchy title song going, ‘ek aur rang bhi dekhiye Bengal ka’, we are hopeful that this new Neeraj Pandey series, Khakee The Bengal Chapter, set in Calcutta/Kolkata, will actually be different. The eight-part show starts with a kidnapping gone wrong, and then the story begins unpacking its wares in right earnest: sloppy goons, sharp cops, a posse of politicians with murky underground connections, nefarious activities involving dead bodies and organ harvesting. A promising start quickly descends into predictability. The beats are familiar, the character types are even more so. Apart from the fact that the faces are mostly Bengali actors — some familiar, some not so — Khakee The Bengal Chapter comes off as same old. And that’s too bad, because the ensemble comprises some of the most popular actors working in Bengali, starting with top stars Prosenjit Chatterjee, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, and Jeet, amongst others.

Ooty-based schoolgirl Dhara (Inayat Verma) is happiest when dancing. Single parent Shiv (Abhishek Bachchan) loves her to bits, but is not mad about her wanting to go off to Mumbai to focus on her moves, even when well-known dancer-teacher (Nora Fatehi) dangles an inducement to attend her sought-after academy. Things start falling into place, and then one day, trouble strikes. Can sheer will and determination win the day? Can dreams really come true?

Based on a true story, The Diplomat is about an Indian woman lured into a false marriage with a Pakistani man, and how her life spirals into a nightmare. The backdrop of terrorism-and-espionage is, by now, very much a John Abraham zone, and here he plays JP Singh, the diplomat who moves from suspicion-to-support when the terrified Uzma Ahmed (Sadia Khateeb) seeks refuge within the Indian embassy in Islamabad.

A stolen motorcycle– ‘dupahiya’– in the fictional village of Dhadakpur becomes the fulcrum around which this new comedy and its characters revolve, delivering a melange of Bihari-via-Mumbai accents, loads of quirk and broad life lessons. This is the mix that gave ‘Panchayat’ its mojo, with Phulera’s Sachivji and Pradhanji and their cohorts becoming a byword in the madly-popular OTT-specific ruralcom genre. Here, Uttar Pradesh is replaced by Bihar, but the mood remains similarly overall sunny, as the occasional clouds created by the busy plot (written by Avinash Dwivedi and Chirag Garg) are dispelled by the show’s determinedly cheerful air: leave the viewer smiling is clearly the mandate.

Take the Dharma template because, duh, this is a Dharma film, borrow deets from a bunch of romcoms, shake ’em up, and you get Nadaaniyan. There’s the swish high-school from ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, which lead character Pia Jaisingh (Khushi Kapoor) helpfully describes as having ‘no-uniform, resort-type vibes’, just in case we miss it. Ms Braganza (Archana Puran Singh, reprising her role, older but not wiser) is back. No student ever seems to go to class: that’s not changed, either. And those who’ve been missing that shooting star, so cute, ya, fear not: it gets a look-see, too.

A small town in South India. A religious festival drumming up nightly fervour. A crime most foul. Red herrings. Confused cops. These elements which made the first season of ‘Suzhal: The Vortex’ such a gripping watch are back in Season 2, except the town is different, and the crime, this time around, is revealed from the get-go: a local lawyer is found dead. Was it suicide, or murder? Two of the lead actors are back, too. Kathir as the cop Sakkarai, is under a professional cloud for something he did in the previous season, and Aishwarya Rajesh as Nandhini, the young woman who slayed her demon in its satisfactory climax, is awaiting trial. Sakkarai has strong filial ties with slain lawyer Chellappa (Lal), and as he delves deeper, past secrets rise to the surface, and everyone connected to the victim comes under the scanner.

Crazxy movie review: The stuck-behind-a-steering-wheel/closed-phone-booth character, hellbent on saving a loved one from dire consequences, has been used in a few films. In ‘Crazxy’, Sohum Shah plays a surgeon, on track for a crucial meeting, poleaxed by a phone call which changes everything: he needs to rapidly regroup and think on his feet, to prevent calamity befalling a member of his family. At 93 minutes, the film is fashioned as an edge-of-the-seat thriller, and Shah’s Dr Abhimanyu Sood does his best to put metal-to-pedal, while fielding calls from a bunch of increasingly agitated people: ex-wife (voiced by Nimisha Sajayan), current interest (voiced by Shilpa Shukla), boss of his hospital (voiced by Piyush Mishra), and a senior teacher (voiced by Tinnu Anand) at his daughter Vedika’s (Unnati Surana, on screen briefly) school, who is empathetic to her special needs.

Dabba Cartel review: A group of Thane-based women come together to fend off multiple elements that are stopping them from being themselves. Sweet housewife Raji (Shalini Pandey), her dour mother-in-law Sheila (Shabana Azmi), mouthy domestic worker Mala (Nimisha Sajayan), unhappy wife-cum-entrepreneur Varuna (Jyotika), smart real-estate agent Shahida (Anjali Anand), all very different from each other, find common cause through an unlikely enterprise: the modest business of daily dabbas with ‘ghar-ka-khana’ laced with a little kick, turns into a ride whose rising profit comes with thrills and danger.