Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein original series : india’s latest original series Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein has one hell of a pilot episode it perfectly establishes the plot characters and stakes and sucks you in whole not to mention giving us one of the smoothest violent murder to zumba.
class transitions you’ll probably ever come across thus starting us on the journey of one of netflix’s most deliciously twisted and strongest indian originals.
yet yeah that’s right finally a netflix india show that we can get behind and celebrate and yes i know the show technically released a week ago and i’m only talking about it now but a bunch of us had covered .
and life basically just stopped for a week so just gotta brother some slack you know created and directed by siddharth gupta who’s also the creator of sony live’s popular crime drama .
and follows a wonderfully warped violent love triangle vikrant singh chauhan played by tahiraj passing who’s clearly having a bit of a moment right now is your average hard-working engineering guy who wants nothing more than a simple life with the girl he loves shikha played by the always wonderful shweta tripati sharma enter .
purva played by anshul singh the daughter of the ruthless local political leader purva has been obsessively in love with vikrant since the age of seven and she’s now back on the scene to stake her claim and mess vikrant’s life up thereby giving us a pulpy deliciously dark and gloriously violent romantic drama .
aside from its dark comedic tone what i loved about the show is just how it subverts and plays with the traditional tropes of the hindi movie love story everything from the idea of the steadfast supportive family to the big indian wedding.
gets flipped on its head in a story about the scary side of true love taken to its most dangerous extreme in a truly refreshing role reversal for once it was great to see the man being caged by the society around him.
here it’s the guy who’s forced to give up on his life and hopes and dreams in order to be trapped by the institution of marriage to a person he doesn’t want to be with so that he has to become the dormac to a family of in-laws that he detests .
where he no longer has any sense of control or agency over his own life now under the thumb of his controlling bride the show follows vikrants increasingly insane predicament as his life falls apart around him along with his various desperate dangerous.
and at times dumbass attempts to outmaneuver and escape his evil captors and protect those he loves it’s a solid premise with all the makings of a great thriller but beyond.
that we also get some great biting moments of black comedy like vikrant desperately googling everything from how
to use and how to hire a trained killer but easily one of my favorite sequences is the show’s take on the ollywood seduction song where we see purva attempting to seduce vikrant on their wedding night after he’s just been forced to get married to her against.
his will as she’s dancing seductively he’s nervously trying to conceal while trying to pluck up the courage to use it against her it’s a great sequence which perfectly captures the essence of the show that said creator siddharth sengupta isn’t quite able to maintain his hold over us throughout the eight episode runtime the latter.
half of the series starts the sag and the narrative gets repetitive as it feels like we’re stuck in the same closed loop of characters doing the same things in the same situations not to mention certain arcs and subplots which just feel unnecessary like the entire fifth episode.
would see shikhar trapped in a car which merely felt like an attempt to stretch out and extend the tension and raise the stakes beyond breaking point truly great thrillers put their characters in insane situations and allow us to watch them transform and evolve into something far beyond.
what they were initially but here everything that happens in the first two episodes for example just keeps happening and the show doesn’t really grow beyond its one line plot shikhar is always fleeing for her life vikrant is always stuck and desperately trying one crazy idea after another to break free.
and purva is always possessive and suspicious rinse and repeat so if you for example jump from the second episode to the sixth or seventh the characters and situations aren’t all that different after a point i just felt the show needed another layer of unpredictability to take us somewhere we didn’t expect for example.
there are promising ideas here like watching vikrant increasingly cross moral lines and gradually become the very thing he hates or even those moments where we start to feel for purva and maybe even weirdly root for her but these are ideas that the show only really explodes in moments Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein original series ends on a cliffhanger .
and a clear promise for a second season i just hope that that has more to offer than just prolonged tension and different variations of okay how is vikrant now going to get out of this one style situations still even at its most repetitive.
the show’s fine cast ensure that we’re always engaged whether it’s seasoned performers like rajendra kala as vikrant’s subservient father or saurabh shukla as the devoted father and violent political leader.
it was also just a joy to watch ananth joshi as vikrant’s lovably loyal best friend goldham as vikrant himself tayraj basin skillfully navigates both victimhood as a trapped trophy husband along with his.
ongoing coming of rage story as he gradually pushes his boundaries of how far he’s willing to go to fight back it’s great to see tahir finally getting his due considering this dude is just everywhere right now with four back-to-back releases.
within two months but for me it was anshul singh’s purva that really steals the show with a charmingly sinister confidence she ensures that you’re both drawn to and scared of purva unfortunately the always impressive sweater party sharma gets the least to do here as chika.
the most underwritten character of the three in the end while i wouldn’t quite put Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein original series in the league of the best thrillers from the indian streaming space it nonetheless left me with hope it’s exactly the kind of specific and distinctive storytelling we’ve all been hoping for from netflix and hopefully.
the first of many you can watch your Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein original series on netflix
