“Case jinna mushkil, fees unni ghatt,” goes the motto of the investigative services, the tenacious protagonist of SonyLiv’s Charlie Chopra and the Mystery of Solang Valley offers. It’s a tagline that Charlie unironically spouts to the camera every time she breaks the fourth wall. There is a streak of broody confidence to her skills that though stubborn, rarely manifest as a form of genius. Instead, Chopra is curious, flawed and excitable in ways that abruptly switch between strength and weakness. It’s what gives this adaptation that wild, if vague spark. Directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, Charlie Chopra’s erroneous approach to unravelling a murder mystery set in the mountains offers a welcome detour from the routine enactment of genius, making it the most desi a Christie mystery has ever felt.
Set in the snowy arms of Manali, this mystery has an air or surrealism about it from the get-go. After a séance – orchestrated by Naseerudin Shah playing a shaman of sorts -at a snowed-in Manali resort, predicts the death of the celebrated Brigadier Meherbaan (Gulshan Grover), things happen as predicted. Some believe it is the curse of Lady Rose, a hair-raising legend that has attested itself to the forests of Solang Valley (a place close to the town). On the spot, perchance is Charlie, played confidently by Wamiqa Gabbi, a zany detective who turns to the camera every time she wants to blab harsh truisms. “Bhen di lakkad,” she says repeatedly over the course of the show’s six episodes. The innate gregariousness of it all feels contradictory, but it is maybe the only way to modernize the traditional Christie sleuth.
Chopra’s fiancé Jimmy becomes the prime accused in the Brigadier’s murder, that both implicates and urges her attention. Suspecting foul play, she ditches subtlety in favour of a front-footed approach and investigates with the veneer of a curious child who swears by her own smartness. Her bullish approach makes the men and women around her look opaquely naïve and innocent. It’s a one-way street that yields interesting, if uneven, results. Courtesy the surroundings, the show looks as visually stunning as it also feels socially undetectable. It avoids the temperature of a mystery, but rarely steers away from discomfort. Christie’s mysteries have always used the stage-like liminality of a closed environment, to play gymnastics with the mind, but here the sunlit peaks, the sheet of white snow, all add a sense of voyeurism to an otherwise calm pursuit. Even bloody death kind of looks beautiful.
Charlie Chopra uses the usual Christie apparatus. A lot of suspects with varying degrees of culpability cut across the line of sight. And though the show begins with a supernatural tug, it quickly settles into a familiar rhythm. A rhythm that is relayed by the many actors and characters on display. The ensemble cast boasts of names like Naseeruddin Shah, Neena Gupta, Ratna Pathak Shah, Lara Dutta and a host of others who ace their small but significant parts. Pathak Shah is deliciously wicked, Gupta adequately soft and sheepish while the returning Dutta dissolves into the unglamorous role of a runaway mom. The women seem far more twisted here and it only adds to the deftness with which they must be played. Chief among which is Gabbi’s leading act, an entertaining, nervous mix of conviction and reluctance.
Chopra is restless, a moving blur of confusion and confidence. She doesn’t always get the picture, but is driven enough to will her way to seeing it. It isn’t necessarily genius that drives her, but this quiet desperation to simply be in the know. A flashback to a night with her mother (also a sleuth for hire), hints at trauma, the narrative conjectures from which aren’t satisfyingly explored. Chopra, therefore, becomes her gaalis, innuendos, acidic barbs when she could have also been a life story. The model, it’s most satisfying parts thus stick to the scope of tradition. Only the visual extensions and the language this version speaks in, change. That said, it’s still a winning formula, led by a terrific cast and admirable headline act by Gabbi.
Charlie Chopra is quirky in a way that maybe only Vishal Bhardwaj could have envisaged. The show mines its location for surrealism and mood, and within it finds this unassertive little place for both violence and murder. Christie’s mysteries can only really be enjoyed if they refuse to acknowledge the severity of their own genesis – grief, death, mourning, etc. Doubt, suspicion, depravity and denial are key ingredients to cooking up stories that revel by staying in place. It’s the gullible mind that’s meant to travel. So much so, you continually wish for all the characters to assemble, so they can dramatically disintegrate as a form of theatre. It’s the genre’s greatest device, and given the cast here, never quite enough. Bhardwaj’s updates and tweaks give the Christie whodunit a youthful vein, and though it might get on your nerves at times, it at least offers a promising spry outlook.
Charlie Chopra and the Mystery of Solang Valley is now streaming on SonyLiv.
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