Mrs. Deshpande

A serial killer is on the loose in Mumbai, targeting his victims with a coil of lurid green rope, arranging them in different poses in different locations. A grizzled cop (Priyanshu Chatterjee) with a long memory remembers a much older series of killings 25 years back in Pune, whose perpetrator has been in prison for that long. Are these copycat killings? But who would know about those murders, carefully buried in dusty case files? Cue Mrs Deshpande (Madhuri Dixit) who is whistled up by the senior policeman to help them crack this case, whose victims seem to have no connection to each other other than a striking similarity in the modus operandi of their murders. She’s been far away from Mumbai, in Hyderabad central jail, being a model prisoner, suspiciously good, in fact.

Nagesh Kukunoor’s had quite the year: an uncanny performance in Paatal Lok 2, the maker of the meticulously dramatised The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, and now the director of a series in which Madhuri Dixit plays a serial killer. It’s no small deal, particularly because Dixit’s role in and as Mrs. Deshpande feels like a spiritual sequel to her role in Anjaam. This six-episode series is based on a French thriller called La Mante, but Dixit’s homemaker is very much the future of that vengeful widow who slaughtered all the evil men that ruined her life. As a character, Mrs. Deshpande is less personal and, in keeping with the times, more patriotic. The stillness about her borders on inertia. Her vague modus operandi revolves around finishing off societal villains like paedophiles, rapists and corrupt politicians. (Add film critics to her list this month). An ethical vigilante of sorts, the show opens with the middle-aged woman being summoned from Hyderabad jail when a copycat killer seems to be on the loose. The style of murder is hers, so she is the only one who can help an absurdly trustful police team to solve the case. A young inspector named Tejas Phadke (an awkward Siddharth Chandekar) leads the investigation, and he’s very suspicious of Mrs. Deshpande — who has renamed herself as Zeenat — and her chequered history. He takes a while to warm up to her in the safehouse. She loves cooking for everyone, but he wonders what plan she’s cooking.

A body is staged leisurely before the murderer vanishes. It’s déjà vu for Mumbai’s Commissioner of Police Arun Khatri (Priyanshu Chatterjee) who dials the central jail in Hyderabad. Mrs. Seema Deshpande (Madhuri Dixit), the serial killer he had imprisoned twenty-five years ago, is still behind bars. Who’s the copycat killer who has patterned himself/herself on Mrs. Deshpande’s modus operandi?