'Kaun Banegi Shikharwati' review: Hodgepodge of a series about dysfunctional royalty

Naseeruddin Shah (centre) as King and Raghubir Yadav (right) as Mishraji in 'Kaun Banegi Shikharwati', written by Ananya Banerjee and directed by Gauravv K. Chawla and Ananya Banerjee, streaming on Zee5.

Raja Mrityunjay or “King” (Naseeruddin Shah), feebly ruling over a Rajasthani princely hamlet called Shikharwati, has given up on living and his family of four estranged daughters. His nervous synapses are awry, and his only fuel is a faithful employee at the palace, Mishraji (Raghubir Yadav).

This character’s (king's) tools for establishing himself are tics, eyebrow lifts and moustache twirls—heartbreaking to watch Shah go through a role without interest or fire. The script and treatment require him more to channel a mime artiste rather than the actor he is.

The king’s existence in the rambling palace that has cavernous, abandoned chambers named after emotions, is simply ceremonial—and his shooting practice every morning is dangerous more than sporty.

Kaun Banegi Shikharwati, written by Ananya Banerjee and directed by Gauravv K. Chawla and Ananya Banerjee, streaming on Zee5, is a farce so gratingly emphatic in its every comedic and emotional moment that even with the family dysfunction and estrangement at its emotional centre, the series unfolds like a '90s’ hammy Govinda farce.

To go through 10 episodes of it without any other reason but for the plot to grindingly and inexorably come to a pleasing conclusion, is too much to ask of audiences with a multitude of choices in this hyper-democratic OTT world of stories.

The king has not paid wealth tax running into several crores and is at a loss about Shikharwati’s future. Mishraji comes up with a plan to unite the king with his four daughters—Devyani (Lara Dutta), a perfectionist mom and housewife under the threat of a Dubai don; Kamini (Kritika Kamra), a directionless and delusional social media influencer; Gayatri (Soha Ali Khan), a yogini and dancer in grand isolation hiding a secret; and Uma (Anya Singh), a video-game designer with a debilitating allergy—and save the palace and the crumbling kingdom. What follows is a series of farcical contests based on the nav rasas for the four princesses to prove themselves worthy successors. The sisters are more foes than sisters, and the king and Mishraji hope for a reconciliation. Will the family come together, and is there an emotional cost to pay for this reconciliation?

All the actors are given one defining quality and the performances are hinged on that one quirk or trait making every performance uniformly monotone. The screenplay does not let up on the melodrama and the humour, mounted on a hammering, antiquated background score, loses its sting by the third episode.

Kaun Banegi Shikharwati brings alive '80s’ and '90s’ Bollywood farces in a slick new package—it loses its cosmetic novelty almost as soon as it unfolds.