It’s really late at night. Hilly roads, mist. A setting that screams for either zombies or murder. Perhaps a woman, or even a man bloodied, runs across the headlights of a car. Or maybe a child or the ghost of one sleepwalking on those winding roads. (It’s never a deer, because India. We’re more likely to come across a late-night chaiwallah on a bicycle than wildlife!)
‘Ooooh! Nice!’ I say, when I see two brothers arguing in the car - and bump - they run over someone. This is a good start to a show.
In my head I award the show five stars. That’s how I usually start. Until odd happenings compel the sleeping giant of a voice inside my head to wake up and ask, ‘Hain?!’
It’s an OTT show, so Jaideep Ahlawat must sport a beard and a ponytail. He’s Jagjeet paaji, dressed for a shaadi and drunk, with his younger brother Daljeet who is driving the car, sober. Daljeet is played by Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub. He too sports a beard. They are driving along quite well until suddenly someone who does not drink wants to open a can of beer and the drunk guy says no, don’t drink. In my head Amitabh Bachchan’s voice wakes up and says, ‘Hain?!’
What follows made me feel bad for Jagjeet paaji. His non-drinker brother rings the doorbell, wants to pick up the body of the man they just ran over, and not just roll the body to the side but pick it up and leave it inside the house, even leave money for the man’s funeral. He even handles the walking stick that belongs to the old man. I said ‘Hain’ so many times and then a light bulb went off in my head: There's something the matter with Daljeet. After all, he has just attended the wedding of his long-time girlfriend to his cousin. Even the bride finds him odd. Good thing Jagjeet has reservoirs of restraint and does not inflict violence on his younger brother. Of course, Daljeet leaves his wallet behind (complete with his visiting card and credit cards and so on)... These are moments where people in the movies fling something at their TV…
Back to channelling my inner Amitabh Bachchan. There’s a private investigator Dushyant (played by Jitendra Joshi), who speaks with a bizarre Bhojpuri type accent. I actually thought he was parodying drunk Amitabh Bachchan. But Jagjeet paaji admonishes him and Dushyant, the habitual drunk, actually gives up alcohol. Jagjeet succeeds where no government program has succeeded before! After that Dushyant sits at the bar drinking lemonade. Hain? What?!
By the way, Jagjeet paaji is Jagjeet Grover, a ‘hotshot’ Punjabi lawyer in, wait for it… Ooty! We never see him at court or anything, but we are told several times that he is a rich lawyer. There’s also a lawyer who shares the contents of the dead man’s will with the neighbour who gets the house but not the books.
Movie lawyers are meant to be weird. But bigger ‘hain’ inducing moments of the show come from the female characters.
Sophie, a niece who is not really a niece, but will play the niece for money (Tina Desai). A sweet old lady who is a neighbour is not really sweet but is as she says, ‘a greedy bitch.’ Her son confesses that she poisons old men for their homes and demands money from Jagjeet, because she knows what the two brothers did that night. The sweet old lady (played by Maya Alagh) has a foul mouth (unwritten rule #63 requires at least one woman in an OTT show to curse). Old lady even wraps the Bhojpuri spy, Daljeet and Sophie around her grubby fingers.
Jagjeet’s unhappy wife Priya goes to the gym and is seduced by Tanya, a female gym instructor (Shruti Seth and Mugdha Godse, respectively). Before you can scratch your head, they’re kissing and making out. You roll your eyes and yell at the TV: since when did lesbian and gay kissing scenes become a must-have in shows produced in India?
Tanya is already slave to the show’s Jabba The Hutt aka Handa Sahab played by Satish Kaushik. Is he a parody too? A villain who claims that everyone should call him Handa Sahab or else get beaten up for disrespecting him. Who thought that dialogue like, ‘I call myself Handa sahab’ and ‘Mera drink hamesha aurat ke haath ka bana hota hai’ was serious and scary rather than a parody of a villain?
But we were still rolling our eyes about the goings-on with the female characters. Tanya ‘makes’ Handa’s drinks, and also steals from the boss’s safe, knowing Mr Yuri is always watching. Why would she do that?
Poor Priya is ready to leave home to zoom off into the sunset with Tanya, but when Tanya says sorry, Priya happily makes out with Jagjeet paaji and asks if they could make babies. Of course, they make out at the dining table because this is OTT content in an India where rich people living in huge bungalows don’t seem to have any house help… Strange, because in real India, even ordinary folk have domestic help that are happy to intrude into your conversations, rooms and even your personal space.
By now my ‘hain’s’ are coming out as groans and grunts. All the characters have turned into a circular firing squad of betrayal. The writing committee must have called it ‘kahani mein twists’. You are ready to empathise with Jagjeet again. He has facepalmed so many times, he actually meekly accepts getting arrested by a female policewoman. I don’t even want to ask why she didn’t show up at the dead old man’s funeral. Or why Indraneil Sengupta shows up in all kinds of shows only to get killed or get injured.
I am convinced that Jagjeet paaji was smiling after being arrested and taken away by the police because he’s fed up with the Betrayal Bunch. Then I’m reminded that this is a remake of a BBC show Guilt. Sorry, not about to watch it. I say my final ‘hain’ and switch the TV off. Suddenly Shin Chan dubbed in Hindi seems like a great idea.
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