Karm Yuddh review: The bland and the boring

There is a scene in Disney+Hotstar’s Karm Yuddh, where a sophisticated but corrupt TV journalist chides his team by asking the price of a random item they possess. “Jab shauk mein koi kami nahi hai toh kaam mein kyun,” he screams unconvincingly at a small group of men and women who stare at the ground in embarrassment. It’s the kind of scene that suggests a show that isn’t afraid to embrace a wilder, unapologetic template to convey its world. The problem is, that none of it is done with the conviction of writing that knows what this ugliness must eventually yield to other than frothy, high-decibel dialogues. Karm Yuddh is a familiar yarn of inter and intra-family feuds set among Kolkata’s elite but can’t do justice to either its foundation or, criminally, a flattering line-up of some very accomplished actors.

Karm Yuddh is about the Roys, a wealthy Kolkata family in the midst of transition. Indrani Roy, played by a decent Paoli Dam, is the pretend heir to the Roy family business, and at loggerheads with the brother of her indisposed husband – Bhisam, a wasted Satish Kaushik.
There are questions about who will preside over the Roy narrative going forward, but it’s a question lost amidst the muddle of a number of sub-plots. A fire at one of their factories sets in motion an investigation, a political cycle of blame that also includes an insincere Naxalite angle, contesting media trials and even touches upon a group of students. Shows usually work from the ground up, but here the coldness between Bhisam and Indrani is teased in the first scene itself, only to be frivolously side-lined for the sake of lazy love angles, corrupt journalism and a salient sprinkling of revenge.

Indrani’s son Abhimanyu (Ankit Bisht), is obviously a spoilt brat. In a sequence from the show, he forcibly kisses a woman and then pursues her with the glint of a romantic who knows it was all part of god’s plan to bring the two together. It’ll make you squirm, because neither the toxicity nor the abrupt re-introduction of charm are reasoned or even adequately packaged. “Karna main sahi chahta hun par aag lag jaati hai yaar,” this man says to the woman he sexually assaulted. There is nothing wrong with putting toxic men into your stories unless you also wish the audience to then readily accept their transition to chocolatey romancers. Abhimanyu has a close friend in Samar, a more than decent Pranay Pachauri, who has been on a bit of a roll in the streaming space. Samar has a backstory that connects him to his father, a strangely limited Ashutosh Rana living in the hills.

The series has the making of a decent family drama ala Succession, but it meanders far too frequently into stories about romance, a sprawling police investigation led by some of the most upright yet uninteresting investigators around, and builds far too many sandcastles to be able to offer something both concrete and substantial at the end of it all. Perhaps, the show’s biggest crime is the wastage of some fine actors, especially veterans like Kaushik and Rana, who are assigned meagre task-lists rather than actual arcs or depth to hold onto. None of the Roys or others in the show for that matter are ‘clean’ but the show’s writing simply isn’t convincing enough to be able to make their vileness, their moral dubiousness palatable.

Possibly the highlight of the show are the adept performances by Dam, quietly believable as the resolute and scheming woman trying to grab power in a world full of men. Equally arresting, if not highly effective, is Pachauri, a young man who seems to be straddling two identities at the same time. And that’s about it. Karm Yuddh is almost like a series that has far too much happening for its own good. There is a whole corrupt journalism angle thrown into the mixer here which brings together an independent vlogger and a wealthy, snide media bigwig, but frankly feels like a needless accessory, the kind you put into a story not because it serves any purpose but because it ticks a panoramic box. The same can be said of the laughably limp Naxalite angle.

Karm Yuddh is one those shows that comes from the vague territory of awkward transitions from the era of 90s TV. Some of the ideas here, the play-acting, the characterisation is as old as cable television and there is precious little to mention about the setting, the environment beyond the surnames, the superficial political context. The show’s biggest problem isn’t that it has a predictable done-to-death template, but the fact that it can’t even stay true to the Succession-esque powergrab at the heart of the show. Instead, it wants to commentate on media, say something nonsensical about young love and farcically undermine the history of bloody conflict by using it, unconvincingly, as a plot device.

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.