Created by: Ali Abbas Zafar
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Zeeshan Ayyub, Sunil Grover
Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)
It is not a great notion at all to project politics as a game – a mere battle of wits – when it is essentially a great deal more, an all-out war with and devoid of weapons. Tandav, produced and directed by Ali Abbas Zafar for Amazon Prime Video, falls prey to this misplaced emphasis. The outcome is a terribly tepid, spectacularly superficial internet series that develops delusions of Shakespearean grandeur and believes it is supplying us a view of the innards of the world’s biggest democracy. Through a tale of vaulting ambition and abject avarice.
Scripted by Gaurav Solanki (who wrote Article 15), Tandav dances to a commonly facile Bollywood beat. It presents a cliched take on energy-crazy politicians that tells us nothing at all that we do not currently know. Murder, blackmail and palace intrigue are the fulcrums of a plot woven about males and females who will cease at nothing at all to cling to their positions.
Saif Ali Khan, in his second internet series (just after the critically acclaimed Sacred Games), is out of his depth right here due to the fact the tale has no genuine sting. Playing Samar Pratap Singh, the scion of a political dynasty, the actor is lowered to holding forth on the character’s perceived misfortunes and the dynamics of democracy that have prevented him from becoming the Prime Minister of India in spite of all the moral help that he has received from his conspiratorial wife, Ayesha (Sarah Jane Dias).
Khan is upstaged for the most element by Dimple Kapadia in the guise of Anuradha Kishore, a super-ambitious lady who challenges the son of a 3-time Prime Minister on his personal turf. She has her personal factors to be disillusioned with what her profession has yielded therefore far and she hopes to get some recompense by way of her son cocaine-snorting Raghu (Paresh Pahuja) and her wily aide Maithili Sharan (Gauahar Khan).
Given the way Tandav kicks off – election day has ended and Devki Nandan (Tigmanshu Dhulia), Samar Pratap’s father, is predicted to win once again – the show raises expectations. Two cops at the web site of a farmers’ agitation against an order to obtain their land for a chemical factory are instructed by a political fixer to bump off 3 Muslim lads – Ayub, Saleem and Imran.
One of the trigger-content cops is Manohar Thakur, the other is Ramjeet Chaudhary. These are pliable males with the proper names. They ask no inquiries ahead of undertaking the bidding of their political masters. Two of the boys, each farmers, are felled by their bullets.
The third, a university student in Delhi, escapes the encounter due to the fact he is summoned to the campus in the nick of time. But he is immediately branded a terrorist for participating in the farmer’s rally (sounds familiar?), picked up from the university, and place in police custody. The students react and all hell breaks loose.
Right upfront Tandav addresses police highhandedness, intimidation of Muslim youth, distress amongst farmers and student unrest in a single sweep. Some hope is kindled. Are we about to witness a daringly radical show? Sadly, Tandav chickens out and loses its way promptly. It turns into a confused mess in which the exploration of the line amongst idealism and opportunism requires a backseat.
The nine-episode series veers into a palace of intrigues exactly where a strong politician and his son play a cat-and-mouse game though an ally of the older man struggles to hold the balance. He fails. The actor playing the part of the ally, Kumud Mishra, is a sturdy presence in the very first handful of episodes ahead of he vanishes absolutely till he resurfaces briefly at the incredibly finish.
The show, as well, under no circumstances hits the proper rhythm, wending its way by way of a minefield of half-baked suggestions that are rendered absolutely ineffectual by a directorial style that nixes any possibility of the characters springing to life and creating sense in the context of the bigger energy struggles that are sought to be depicted.
The manner in which Tandav blends historical reality with flights of fictive fancy does not click due to the fact the show under no circumstances rises above the pedestrian. One of numerous issues that performs against the series is the casting. The actors who play the politicians and the student activists appear more like models – numerous of the cast members are genuine-life models – than dyed-in-the-wool street fighters.
And actors who may well have added some heft to Tandav are saddled with sketchily delineated characters. The worst off in this regard are Sandhya Mridul in the part of a university professor and Annup Sonii as a Dalit politician waiting for his moment in the son.
The title refers to the upheavals triggered by disgruntled students of an institution named VNU (Vivekananda National University), exactly where a young man named Shiva Shekhar (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub) spearheads a movement aimed at securing azaadi from exploitation, privation and feudalism. Azaadi? The word does not raise hackles right here the way it did in reality not all that lengthy ago.
In the fictional universe of Tandav, Shiva and his co-travellers naturally hark back to the tumult that a number of campuses – in particular JNU – have witnessed in current years. The rest of the series is rooted in a entirely imaginary globe. Samar Pratap feels he hasn’t been provided his due by his father. The moves he tends to make as a outcome sparks a whirlpool of chaos that stymies his ambitions. When you can not be king it is far better to grow to be a kingmaker, he decides.
Samar’s plans to stake his claims on the highest political workplace of the land faces opposition from his father’s closest political ally Gopal Das Munshi (Kumud Mishra) and Anuradha, who is Devki Nandan’s continual companion. Samar’s trusted hitman Gurpal Chauhan (Sunil Grover) tends to make confident that the iron usually stays hot sufficient for his boss to strike when the time is ripe.
As the tussle for energy intensifies, Samar tends to make a bid to wean Shiva away from his leftist moorings and acquire handle of the VNU campus exactly where he himself was a student leader numerous years ago. He enlists the aid of a former classmate and a existing professor, Jigar Sampath (Dino Morea), in this parallel mission.
Unfortunately, a majority of the Tandav characters are hopelessly underwritten. The more exciting ones have shady cores, not the least amongst them is Gurpal, who watches a spiritual guru’s show on tv and feeds his pet cat just after just about every misdeed he commits. Sana Mir (Kritika Kamra), a girl from Kashmir who is an associate of Shiva’s. has secrets that blow up in her face and push her into a deep, dark hole of deceit, betrayal, guilt and worry.
But incredibly tiny in the rest of the show that is as exciting as Sana Mir’s story. Tandav is more fluff than fury.
1 Comment
Wow that was strange. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear.
Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say excellent blog!