Tandav
Creator Ali abbas zafar
To emit Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Sunil Grover, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Gauahar Khan
Even the latest season of House of Cards, which is generally considered the worst of all, is better than anything Amazon Prime Video’s Tandav has to offer. Like Machiavelli for high school students, the new political drama takes ideas that might have seemed complex on paper, but dilutes them so thoroughly that they skim waste material.
Saif Ali Khan plays Samar Pratap Singh, the son of a prime minister for two terms. Tandav opens with Prime Minister Devki Nandan poised to score another victory in the general election. Samar, whom Saif essentially plays as a kid from a trust fund, also has designs in the lead position.
Watch the Tandav trailer here
It’s a strange performance from Saif, one that robs the character of all subtlety. Not that Gaurav Solanki’s script could have been redeemed by the actors, but you would expect a more nuanced approach, considering the great potential of the material. Tandav, on the other hand, transmits each idea with the force of a ‘lathi’ to the kneecap. Almost as if doubting the audience would keep up with its (extremely) basic plot, the show has the characters collect important moments and think out loud routinely.
So when Samar hatches a plan to fill the power vacuum left by the sudden death of his father, he makes the strange decision to speak about it to virtually everyone within earshot. Those who are not aware of his plans, including a journalist, receive an immediate phone call from Samar, informing them. How could he have expected his master plan to go smoothly when he can’t even be trusted to keep his mouth shut? This is not an exageration; in one scene, Samar, as possessed by the spirit of a James Bond villain, narrates his methods to the person he has just poisoned. You almost expect me to provide you with the recipe for his deadly cocktail below.
Samar might as well have been twirling his mustache or stroking a cat. “How obvious,” he scoffs in one scene, having correctly predicted his opponent’s next move, as if he’s smarter than the others. It is not. Everyone else is just as dumb as him. There is a difference.
This superficial approach also extends to the support model. A scion who snorts cocaine is always snorting; and every time Dimple Kapadia came on the scene, I expected him to laugh like a maniac. Tandav is a show that rarely scratches below the surface. It’s a civics lesson for 5-year-olds. It belongs, to use the least flattering comparison, to Aashram’s school of storytelling. The theme music is suspiciously similar.
The show dabbles in ideas that, frankly, are too complicated to be executed in a way like this. Better minds than series creator and director Ali Abbas Zafar have tried and failed to make sense of the student rallies and farmers’ protests, who play an important role in Tandav. So as Samar’s story unfolds in the upper echelons of Indian politics, a parallel plot unfolds on the campus of a fictitious university, clearly inspired by JNU.
I understand why they have to do this, but creating fictional surrogates for actual organizations, people, and locations only pushes the show further into the realm of fantasy. For example, in one scene, Gauahar Khan’s character is contacted by an anonymous person and promises him a vague ‘saboot’ of Samar’s misdeeds in exchange for an exorbitant amount of cash. Maithili, that’s the character of Gauahar, he is instructed to bring the money and throw it into a trash can in the South Block. She does it in broad daylight, wearing the most fabulous saree, and manages to complete her task without a hitch. In real life, walking down Raisina Hill with a suspicious package would be like performing a real ‘tandav’ outside the Rashtrapati Bhavan. You’d be nailed to the ground in no time.
By adopting this ridiculous tone, Ali and his team completely ignore the moral questions at the center of stories like this one. When the main objective is to remove the carpet from under the feet of the audience, again and again, you lose sight of the broader issues that should have been examined. What drives Samar to perform these vile acts? We will never know. Or maybe it will be addressed in later episodes; Amazon provided only the first five for the preview.
Also Read: Aashram Chapter 2 Review: Bobby Deol Needs To Rethink His Choices After This Surprisingly Amateur Series
Tigmanshu Dhulia, however, is great as Devki Nandan (who is eliminated after episode one, in the first of the show’s many missteps), as is the ever-excellent Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub as a passionate student leader. Even the funniest lines sound believable when they’re broadcast.
But the brightest spark is the shadowy Gurpal Chauhan, who works as a kind of enforcer for Samar. Played by Sunil Grover, Gurpal has the mind of Tom Hagen and the murky morals of Luca Brasi. He represses his guilt by taking care of a cat. What an interesting idea. But this is Tandav. Why touch something gently when you can kick it?
Follow @htshowbiz for more
The author tweets @RohanNaahar
.
