Brown

Seven episodes of Brown later, I couldn’t help but make my way to a place I never visit: ChatGPT. I keyed in a series of prompts which looked exactly like this: Serial killer + Murder mystery + Kolkata + Anglo-Indian community + Alcoholic and troubled cop + Food + Rabindrasangeet + Noir feel + Shadowy spaces + Kolkata landmarks + Sepia frames. In less than five seconds, I was staring at a plot uncannily similar to what I had just watched. It had even suggested a title for the story: “Sepia Nights”. ‘Sepia’ is, of course, described as “a deep reddish-brown colour”. ‘Brown’ is the operative word here. Before you rap my knuckles for venturing even close to AI, Brown has already beaten me to it. The series, now streaming on ZEE5, is nothing more than an algorithmic amalgamation of everything that Kolkata is. More importantly, it shows more of what Kolkata isn’t. Granted that Brown is a serial-killer thriller and not a geography lesson. But for a story that relies so much on atmospherics, it is a shame that director Abhinay Deo, along with his team of writers (Suri Gopalan, Diggi Sissodia, Sunayana Kumari and Mayukh Ghosh) choose to present the city through such a stereotypical, trite lens.