Not convincing enough

Manpriya Singh

Six college friends get together after six long years in the ominous Madhupur bungalow. Sure enough, each of them has a backstory, spanning as many societal issues as can be encapsulated into six characters i.e. substance abuse, mental health issues, caste complexes, emotional baggage, the plight of tribal women and child sexual abuse. You name it.

While the story plays out in a non-linear narrative at the same speed at which a shuttle is exchanged between two rackets, their issues don’t interest you, their past doesn’t hold you back, the present doesn’t take you any further.

The recent Zee5 original borrows heavily on explicit scenes, cuss words and relies solely on shades of grey and dark past of its characters, but they must have played well in the head of the writers. For, they certainly didn’t pan out well on the screen.

Rishi (Tanmay Dhanania), Sam (Aditya Bakshi), Neha (Anindita Bose), Tanya ( Madhurima Roy), Ritwik (Saurabh Saraswat), Ananya (Ishaa Saha) during their reunion decide to play the game of Mafia, simply because they used to play it earlier. And partly because charades and antakshari don’t get the veto. Accidentally gate crashing into the reunion party is the stranger Nitin Kumar (played well by Namit Das).

Mafia may have been received well in early 2000s when we were starting out with below-average thrillers like Kucch To Hai, but not in a time when the audience has been acquainted to some of the best OTT originals.

A rotten spoilt brat, a hippie at heart, an opportunist side-kick, an ambitious girl as a close-knit group of college friends needs a lot more explanation and logic for the audience to feel their chemistry.

It’s hard to figure out what’s more clichéd, the characters or the dialogues. What’s more lazy—the script or the casting? “Chal na, we’ll have fun,” is how one of them convinces the reluctant other for the reunion. “Stop drinking like this, if you continue like this liver cirrhosis is just around the corner,” is how the sober one in the group takes a shot at convincing the heavy drinker in the group. “You ignored me, when you were preparing for your future,” says the girl, who has made it to her dream college in NYU, but finds defending herself in front of her insecure boyfriend. If at all, the series can be applauded for the intention of highlighting the plight of tribal women and casteism.

Ankita Chakraborty as Bidhua, a housemaid, who works in Madhupur bungalow, has been sexually exploited by the powerful is yet another character that had great potential but is poorly etched. Mafia must have sounded brilliant at the narration stage, or maybe while it was on paper. But that is where the series was best left and never taken to the sets.

manpriya@tribunemail.com