Andhera review: This Prajakta Koli series is a juvenile mish-mash

Indian Express

12 hours ago

Andhera review: The hardest thing about this show is also the easiest. Once you accept the fact that heightened hokeyness is key to both the characters and the construct, you begin admiring the straight-faced seriousness with which everyone gets with the plan, with nary an eye roll or giggle in sight.
Without giving too much away, and I suppose I couldn't even if I wanted to, so outlandish is everything, the 'andhera' in the title turns out to be a malevolent entity which threatens to enslave human-kind. It has wriggly tentacles which probe and fasten, whisking victims away into a never-never land where they lie in suspension, neither dead nor alive, mere husks.
Which is a good time as any to say that 'Andhera', directed by Raaghav Dar, created by Gaurav Desai, and co-written with Dar, Desai, Chintan Sarda and Karan Anshuman, should come with a tagline: suspend all disbelief, all ye enter this supernatural-horror territory. Underneath it all, though, there's the strangely persuasive idea of a gigantic entity supping hungrily on our minds, which is pretty much what AI does : suck up our intelligence so that those controlling it can fatten and then profit off of it.
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Part of the trouble is that it is spread over eight long episodes, during which we see fearful people flinging themselves out of high windows, or about to jump off terraces; being trussed up in strange machines in secret labs run by lackeys of evil corporations, and characters busying themselves in different aspects of the supernatural. One (Prajakta Koli) is working on a podcast on bhoot, pishach aur djinns; all made-in-India-demons, comments a wise-cracking character. Another (Karanvir Malhotra) is a self-admitted depressive, spouting words like dysthymia and progeria. Yet another (Kavin Dave) is comic-book obsessive who claims to have located the origin of the 'andhera'.
Finally, it all becomes too much of a juvenile mish-mash, with elements too eager to please millennials as well as an older demographic. The convoluted plot, which keeps darting off in different directions, stays super busy: earnest cop (Priya Bapat) and swish wellness clinic owner (Surveen Chawla) meet cute, two brothers hold out stories of hope which can help dispel darkness, a greedy billionaire who will go to any extent to become 'ajar amar' (immortal), a young boy who is a perfect candidate for a sinister experiment, a doctor who is in on the project. If that is not enough, we get flashbacks of child abuse and misogynists deeming troubled women 'mad' and locking them away, and a vat of thick blackness which seethes and bubbles, and swallows humans whole.
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If nothing else, here's a series which throws a thicket of interesting ideas at the kitchen sink, and films it all quite vividly. But every time things begin to stick, they are made to break apart again, and you are left looking for the whole: if you get more out of 'Andhera', do enlighten me. For now, I am off to find a light bulb.
Andhera cast: Priya Bapat, Karanvir Malhotra, Prajakta Koli, Pravin Dabas, Surveen Chawla, Kavin Dave, Anand Ingale, Jairoop Jewan, Vatsal Sheth, Mohit Prajapati, Priyanka Setia
Andhera director: Raaghav Dar
Andhera rating: Two stars