The latest series by Rajkumar Gupta of ‘No One Killed Jessica’ fame, starring Riteish Deshmukh, seems more intent on exaggerating an underdog story than developing an intelligent thriller
In this post-Covid world, the timing of Pill — an eight-episode examination of the malpractices of Big Indian Pharma that end up endangering human lives — could not be more timely. Just a few months ago, AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, admitted that Covishield, its Covid vaccine, can cause side-effects such as blood clots, low platelet counts, and neurological deficits. If that’s not worrying enough, AstraZeneca is already facing a class action lawsuit in the UK that accuses its vaccine of causing deaths. So far, 51 cases have been filed against the multinational giant. That is to say, for a country that has survived the pandemic and come out on the other side only to discover the long-term side-effects of the vaccines on our bodies, such a show exists as cinematic retribution.
Then there’s the fact that the show, now streaming on JioCinema, is created, co-written and co-directed by Rajkumar Gupta, the filmmaker behind Aamir (2008) and No One Killed Jessica (2011). At first glance, Pill’s ambition to investigate the roots of bureaucratic corruption and medical negligence feels cut from similar cloth as No One Killed Jessica, a riveting thriller that laid bare gender and power imbalances with precision and depth. One would also think that the ease of long-form would allow Gupta to pay attention to the minutiae of storytelling and characterization with a renewed focus. Yet, that’s not exactly the case — Gupta goes several steps backwards with Pill, helming a straightforward series that seems more intent on exaggerating an underdog story than developing an intelligent thriller.
Powerlessness, both heroic and tragic
Over eight episodes, Pill follows four upstanding whistleblowers who uncover the excesses of Forever Cure, a profit-hungry pharmaceutical company that forge numbers and bribe their way to ensure that their substandard drugs find their way to the market. In the process, the screenplay — written by Gupta, Parveez Shaikh, and Jaideep Yadav — paints a portrait of the nexus among businessmen, doctors, government officials and politicians that enables the kind of medical corruption that proves to be life-threatening. And yet, it barely comes close to outline the mechanism of the inner rot in bureaucracy simply because Pill turns into another one of those socially relevant series that tends to only take refuge in self-righteousness, revealing the kind of creative mediocrity that is now par for the course in Indian streaming.
The lack of ambition is visible in the narrative devices that the show employs to heighten the beating of the system effect. The crucial folder of evidence that starts off the chain of whistleblowing is discovered by an unsuspecting paparazzi photographer aspiring to be an investigative journalist at a garbage dumpyard. Then, there are Facebook statuses that become the means of connection among the three sets of whistleblowers. The characters in the show are either evil people or then, they are puppets doing the bidding for evil people. By which I mean, these eight episodes aren’t designed to be an investigation rooted in solid storytelling but rather, in heavy-handed coincidences and circumstances.
The plot is linear to a fault — a cause is whipped off just as easily as the consequences are magnified and erased — and the pacing, so sedate that even when all the odds stack up against the show’s protagonists, it always seems like a cakewalk for them to overcome. Whether that is a sole journalist launching a campaign against a heavily-armored million-dollar company or a conscientious government official becoming the face of a court case. Powerlessness is both heroic and tragic in Pill, evidence of an unimaginative writer’s room eager to cover all bases instead of taking a stance.
A one-sided battle
Still, this idea that there is perhaps no design to beating a system corrupt and powerful to its very core except strokes of luck would have been easier to buy had Pill made up for its narrative gaps with thrilling performances. The show stars Riteish Deshmukh — an actor more comfortable with comic timing — as Prakash Chauhan, a bespectacled, middle-class government employee leading the whistleblowing against a group of powerful men. It then pits him against the extraordinary Pavan Malhotra, who plays the sinister CEO of Forever Cure, with an explosive energy, layering his character’s vileness with a surprising sentimentality that goes beyond the weak characterization.
It’s not only that Malhotra is a scene-stealer in practically every second of the show but also, that the makers don’t respect their material enough to give him a formidable adversary. Deshmukh is lacklustre for much of the show, his performance coming across more as a dress-rehearsal rather than the real thing. And there is nothing worse than being sold a crime thriller than is actually, a one-sided battle.
That’s especially true of the show’s more emotionally demanding moments which Deshmukh struggles to own, even when paired opposite the show’s supporting cast. It doesn’t help that the supporting characters are as thinly sketched, their existence reduced to props. Without these fundamental storytelling blocks, the embellishments that accompany Pill ceases to matter. If after a runtime of over four hours, a show cannot become more than its logline, then that’s not just a problem, it’s a tragedy.
