Kaala Paani review: Survival drama struggles to stay afloat, shines in parts

Mona Singh plays Dr Soudamini Singh, the chief medical officer at Andaman. She is feisty, incorrigible and eccentric. She has a team of resident doctors training under her wing who she often chastises lovingly being the doting mentor that she is. Soudamini is also differently-abled — she says she can run marathons despite her prosthetic leg. The vibe in the emergency room of the hospital is very Devil Wears Prada where Soudamini, much like Miranda Priestly, shows tough love to those new in the profession — twice, she deliberately addresses a postdoctoral fellow Ritu Gagra (Radhika Mehrotra) by the wrong name.

Shows more than it tells

Devil Wears Prada ends the moment a ward of patients, who are infected with a mysterious virus, comes into focus. That is when The Last of Us begins and Soudamini tries to decipher the origins of a possibly lethal bacteria, which is making people sick. Mona Singh effortlessly carries the drama in the first episode with the help of acting powerhouses like Amey Wagh and Ashutosh Gowariker. Wagh is perfectly cast as the chief-antagonist, Ketan, who colludes with a multi-million dollar corporation ATOM, thereby jeopardizing the survival of the indigenous Oraka tribe. Gowariker emerges as the voice of reason as Admiral Zibran Qadri, the Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and Nicobar, who strikes a balance between the scientific and humanistic approach. 

And that is about all the good things in the show. The narrative nosedives shortly after Mona Singh’s death in the first episode. What seemed like a Grey’s Anatomy-meets-Stranger Things style origin story of a doctor is cut short by her shocking death and the rest of the series comes across like a school skit on social welfare.

Many films and works of art in the visual medium falter because they tell more than show. Kaala Paani, however, has a different problem. It not only tells and makes all of its central dilemmas obvious but also dumbs down the plot and explains the man-versus-nature conflict like a powerpoint presentation to the viewers, barely allowing them to decipher analogies like the trolley v/s switch or other themes in the show themselves.

If that’s not enough, there is also a neatly-wrapped, well-explained summary of the episode narrated in voiceover, explaining all the conflicts and dilemmas in case you missed it the first ten times it was spelled out. Barring Singh, Wagh and Gowarikar, barely any other cast member is able to hold their own on the screen. Even Mona Singh falters towards the end when she ventures into a dark alleyway alone with a torch asking “Koi hai?”

A spark in a lackluster show

Jyotsana (played by Arushi Sharma) and Vinayak Prabhu (Vennu) are star-crossed lovers who reunite in Port Blair after Jyotsana’s childhood romance goes sour. The couple is vanilla, lacking any spark or chemistry, so much so that it seems like they were created by a ChatGPT command prompt.

Some of the key dialogue in the series falls flat. When you hear lines like “Tulip island mein kuch darawna ho raha hai” and “Half a million…half a million people are at risk”, you are instantly reminded of Ranbir Kapoor’s infamous line “Mujhe aag se darr nahi lagta” from Brahmastra. The fear and panic felt by the characters as a lockdown is imposed doesn’t really move the viewers. Showrunners Sameer Saxena and Amit Golani, however, have effectively portrayed what it is like to suffer from PTSD after a traumatic event — having lost her fiancé in a car accident, Jyotsana is still trying to recover from the loss she suffered.

One character that works well despite a lackluster show is Chiru (played by Sukant Goel), Pundi’s henchman, who serves as an anti-tribal voice in the show. Unlike his brother Vennu, who is fighting for the rights of Orakas, Chiru feels the Mahotsav will generate employment opportunities and, therefore, must continue despite deforestation. Chiru is far from idealistic. He is problematic and even goes as far as fetishizing and exoticizing the tribals, this despite being a local. “If the tourists give them bread and biscuits, they even do a little dance”, he says at one point. The morally gray character will keep you guessing which way his loyalties lie till the very end.

The redemption arcs

The show ends on a high note with the indigenous Orakas fighting it out with the local police who attack them, thereby debunking Qadri’s problematic notions of Darwin’s theory of evolution. It is revealed via Ketan that Orakas have not only survived a similar outbreak in 1989 but also developed a vaccine — an antibacterial plant that can be used to treat the infection. The reclamation of the tribal narrative towards the end is effective and convincing, as even their nemesis Chiru switches sides and joins Orakas in their fight against the corporates.

Two characters who started off as antagonists in the show — Ketan (Wagh) and Chiru (Goel) — the former unlikeable, the latter ambiguous, but mostly unlikeable, undergo character development with rock-solid redemption arcs. Meanwhile, Jyotsana is murdered in cold blood by Santosh, but staying true to the theme of Darwin’s evolution theory, we see a species of plant named after Jyotsana flourish. She may not have survived the disease, but her legacy will continue to live on for generations to come.

Kaala Paani had potential to be a great show — you can see the spark in bits, like silver lining amid dark clouds, but most of this potential is wasted. With the correct execution and better performances, Kaala Paani could have been the breakout show of the year. It could have perhaps sparked conversations around environmental conservation and provided a much-needed break from the crime-thriller genre that has saturated the OTT space. Hell, at the very least, it could have been a fun, spooky Halloween weekend binge. You may, however, give it a chance, after all.

Kaala Paani is streaming now on Netflix.