The serial killer drama starts with Bhumi Pednekar’s career-best turn as DCP Rita Ferreira, but cliched writing and a troubling portrayal of gender dysphoria turn this psychological thriller into a missed opportunity
Amazon Prime Video’s latest show, the serial killer psychological drama Daldal (‘quicksand’ in Hindi), makes a rather bold narrative choice at the end of its first episode. With its concluding shot, it tells the audience who the killer is, but keeps their motivations a secret (for now). With that shot it also makes the choice to become a ‘whydunnit’ rather than a whodunnit. Essentially, the show is saying, “We trust our characters and our writing, and we don’t need the narrative hook of finding out who the killer is”. It’s a brave move, but sadly for creator Suresh Triveni and director Amrit Raj Gupta, it’s one that doesn’t always pay off.
Daldal isn’t a bad show, on the whole. Its noirish atmosphere and through-line of systemic misogyny are strong and communicated effectively to the audience. The narrative follows DCP Rita Ferreira (Bhumi Pednekar) and her de facto deputy Indu Mhatre (Geeta Agrawal Sharma), as they race against time to find a new serial killer prowling the streets of Mumbai, stuffing the throats of his victims (with anything at hand, really: raw chicken, documents, even a mobile phone).
The performances, led by Bhumi Pednekar and Geeta Agrawal Sharma, are compelling for the most part. However, the writing is cliched and stereotypical in the last 2-3 episodes (there are seven in total, each between 30-40 minutes lengthwise). And the presence of some very outdated serial killer tropes makes things worse. In the final equation, Daldal represents a missed opportunity for the makers — a mediocre final product with intermittent flashes of brilliance, a strong starter that promised so much with its first couple of episodes, only to disappoint eventually.
Rita Ferreira and the parent trap
The show’s protagonist, Rita Ferreira (Pednekar), is based on writer Vish Dhamija’s cop character from books like Bhendi Bazaar (which this series is loosely based on). Daldal’s writer and creator Suresh Triveni has done a fine job of adapting Ferreira’s character for the show. In the books, Rita Ferreira showed too many telltale signs that screamed, “I am a woman written by a man”. We were told how Rita’s uniform flattered her bottom, how she revelled in meaningless, no-strings-attached sexual encounters et cetera.
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In other words, she was a male fantasy, written by a man for the salacious pleasures of other men. Bhumi Pednekar’s Rita Ferreira, on the other hand, is a strong and assertive leader, but her character isn’t defined by sex appeal, gimmickry or shock value — in fact, Ferreira is a textbook example of old-school stoicism. She is a patient, long-suffering, world-weary survivor of thin-skinned misogynists and their patronising ways. Towards the beginning of the show, she is appointed DCP of Mumbai, a big promotion by any standards. But she soon realises that her boss gave her the job to convert her into a PR prop (in one infuriating scene, he keeps telling her to smile more and fix her posture for a magazine photo-shoot).
Pednekar delivers what for me is her career-best performance as Rita Ferreira. Her restraint is admirable, and when Ferreira can’t take it anymore and has to lash out at someone, anyone, Pednekar’s intensity is electrifying. The most challenging part of her role was to depict childhood trauma — her mother Isabel (a divorced cop, played by Vibhawari Deshpande) berated her daily, especially when the child expressed an admiration for her father. There’s a moment where Pednekar hallucinates herself in a school uniform that has been soiled — and no matter what she does, the dirt just doesn’t come off. It might be on the nose, psychologically speaking, but the acting is terrific in this scene and really underlines the horror and the trauma of the scene.
Geeta Agrawal Sharma, who has been enjoying a purple patch of late (Laapataa Ladies, All India Rank et al), further enhances her growing reputation as a dependable character actor. Her character here, Indu Mhatre, is a study in contrast with Ferreira because she has a loving husband, an adorable child and a stable domestic life unlike Ferreira who has just walked out on her fiancé, at the beginning of the show. Sharma does brilliantly in the scenes where Mhatre kind of mothers Ferreira (without making her feel conscious of it).
Old wine in a new bottle
All of this good work, however, starts to come undone by the disappointing way in which the killer has been written. Without revealing the identity of said killer, I shall try and explain why I had big problems with this character.
Firstly, there is no consistency to this character at all. During one scene, we see that as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the killer is especially sensitive to a child’s suffering. But soon after, we see the killer holding a bunch of children hostage, in order to lure Rita Ferreira and force a face-to-face confrontation. During one scene, we are shown that physical touch repels the killer instantly (again, a trauma response). But soon after, we see the killer during a moment of intimacy initiated by them, not the other party. These are just a couple of contradictions that leap out at you.
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However, I had a larger issue with the role played by gender dysphoria in shaping the killer’s mind. We are shown that the killer uses wigs and prosthetics to “fit” the gender most people assign to them at first sight. We are also shown that the killer’s mother brought the killer up as the “wrong” gender, and that this ill-advised parenting made an indelible impact on the child’s psychology. In the recent Madhuri Dixit serial killer drama Mrs Deshpande, too, the killer turns out to be a man who had suffered gender dysphoria in the past, and has since transitioned into a woman. In the 2022, Akshay Kumar serial killer film Cuttputlli, the killer turns out to be a man who likes to dress up as a woman.
This trend is irresponsible and extremely dangerous, painting marginalised and frequently targeted groups (trans people, cross-dressers, non-binary and queer folks et al) as inherently unstable and just one bad day away from becoming mass murderers. It’s been over three decades since Silence of the Lambs was released, and in the intervening years, several scholars have written well-argued essays about how the serial killer character Jame Gumb/ Buffalo Bill contributed to incorrect and harmful stereotypes about trans women (in the film, Gumb wants to become a woman but fails to qualify for gender reassignment surgery, much to his frustration).
Even if you don’t agree with the paragraph above, it’s just so boring and repetitive to have serial killers narrate their sordid stories of childhood abuse and sexual misconduct. Why can’t we have serial killer stories where the murderer comes from a stable, sorted house, with parents who love them? Why is childhood abuse and/or gender dysphoria so very necessary in this context? The notorious real-life serial killer Wayne Williams came from a very stable home; his parents were teachers. Randy Kraft, the so-called Freeway Killer, had three older sisters who doted on him and a mother who worked an assortment of odd jobs to make sure young Randy had everything he needed.
There is simply no excuse for the way Daldal, Mrs Deshpande et al write their serial killers. It’s 2026, for God’s sake and this is the kind of writing that would have been out of place in 1996, to be very honest. Which is a shame because like I said earlier in this review, Daldal has flashes of brilliance, great performances across the board, and a solid opportunity to make a difference in this crowded genre. Alas, it chooses to repeat the mistakes of the past and as a result, languishes in mediocrity.
