The eight-part show rides on cliches of the 1990s’ cop-action genre. They soon turn to excuses for lacklustre writing and it's no fun and games after that
How often does it happen that you are watching a series and end up thinking to yourself: “This should have been a movie instead”? This growing concern, that showrunners of late are ill-utilising their creative freedom offered by the web, is likely to be exemplified a little more by the latest Disney+ Hotstar series Bad Cop, which comes as the Indian iteration of the 2017 German show Bad Cop: Kriminell Gut.
Desi-fied and brought to the shores of Mumbai, the series stars talented names like Gulshan Devaiah, Anurag Kashyap, Harleen Sethi and Saurabh Sachdeva, among others, who toil their hardest to lend a flimsy material some grit and girth. Part-Rohit Shetty and part-Kashyap himself, Bad Cop is an audacious blend of sensibilities that also includes a stiff throwback to the films of the 1990s.
From the protagonist pledging to take his ‘Bhai ke maut ka badla’ (the revenge for brother’s death) to the villain hollering (not once but many, many times) “mera consignment kahan hai” and everything in between, this is a show that wants to be a kind of a guilty pleasure and, therefore, rides knowingly on cliches. But when those very cliches start to become excuses for lacklustre writing and poor plotting, the fun and the adventure begin to dwindle pretty fast.
Running with an age-old trope
Karan and Arjun are two identical twins separated many years ago in an orphanage. The former was picked up by a well-to-do family whereas the latter, much to his protective brother’s dismay, was left to fend for himself in the big, bad world. Karan becomes a cop and Arjun becomes a chor but destiny, as it always does, wants to test them a little more. Maybe let one of them get a taste of the other side for a bit?
As a contrivance, Bad Cop uses this age-old trope to good effect and runs with it. It is intentional and keen on taking liberties and expects that the audience is smart enough to let go of certain characteristics; both brothers are absolute spitting images of one another, they sound the same, walk the same, even have the same haircut, etc. Simultaneously, the makers, including director Aditya Datt and Head Writer Rensil D’Silva, seem mindful of the duration and the wiggle room that long-format storytelling offers and they weave in several other story threads to, let’s say, up the ante.
If Karan is after this gangster/smuggler named Kazbe (Anurag Kashyap), Arjun has his own murder case to run away from. If Arjun has a loving partner-in-crime in Kiki (Aishwarya Sushmita), a seemingly ‘well-settled’ Karan has marital problems with Devika, who also happens to be his senior at work. Another tenacious cop, Arif Khan (Saurabh Sachdeva), comes into the picture and so do a few gangsters to make this a wholesome game of deceit and duplicity. Action isn’t just the genre but also a modus operandi here — the time to mull over nuances is very little and the stakes are pre-decided to remain high throughout, so the writers simply skim over everything.
The mayhem of the excess
So far so good, but the problems begin to occur when Bad Cop ends up mistaking hurriedness for pacing. It won’t be incorrect to say that it also gets caught between two templates — between the Rohit Shetty-esque and the Anurag Kashyap-esque — and never really fully commits to either of the two. On the one hand, we see the central character wading through an existential crisis situation and biting one bullet after another.
On the other, the bad guy parodies himself in classic 1980s and 1990s ishtyle to such an extent that the great and inimitable Kanti Shah might feel interested in casting him. Everyone gets eccentricities here — the cops, the lawyers, the gangsters, the crooks, etc. — but they largely function as ornamental devices and nothing else. Bad Cop wants to model itself on a quirky yesteryear comedy sincerely but the effort is visible only in the facades, the stylizations and not so much in its depths, where you really root for all the characters and not just the protagonist.
Some of the moments, such as Kashyap’s Kazbe unashamedly serenading a sex worker to Bedarji Raja, might be fleetingly entertaining but the fusion of sensibilities is so jarring that you do not make sense of much after a point. The rush felt inside the viewer could not be because of the way the narrative is designed, but mostly because of the mayhem caused by the excess.
Gulshan Devaiah steals the show
Does that mean there is nothing to write home about? Not necessarily, because the plot of Bad Cop is dense enough to ooze out occasional fun and it does so when it lays all of its focus on Gulshan Devaiah. The actor is effortless in his portrayal of a conflicted character and he elevates the writing on several counts, using his body language and energy to great effect. Devaiah is also compelled to do some action in the series and here, too, he doesn't get ahead of himself in trying to prove a point or reveal a new side of his; instead, he superbly remains in tune with his character and brings in his trademark naturalism.
It helps that he has a solid partner on screen in Harleen Sethi whose skill to demonstrate almost everything just with her eyes is to be marvelled at. Sethi has been in splendid form over the last couple of years and together, the two infuse a lot of tenderness into their relationship arc which, despite being stereotypical, manages to strike a chord.
Should Bad Cop have been a movie after all? Well, in either case, the writing had to be much superior than what it is currently but at least a movie would have laid out more restrictions on the makers, urging them to cut out the frills. With the volume of content only bloating with each passing day, Bad Cop may flow under the radar and not make a strong impression on the digital audience. But if you are keen on watching Gulshan Devaiah try out something new and be good at it, then this one's the right 'time-pass' stuff.
Two of the eight episodes of Bad Cop were released on June 21; this will be followed by one episode a week. This review, however, is based on the first six episodes.
