Kankhajura review: Roshan Mathew holds our attention, and keeps us there

Indian Express

a day ago

Adapted from Israeli show 'Magpie', a chirpy synonym for police informers, Kankhajura brings the tale home, to Goa. Ashu (Roshan Mathew), out from prison after 14 years, goes looking for his beloved older brother Max (Mohit Raina), and finds him very well-off, and looking to expand his construction business, along with his old pals Pedro (Ninad Kamat) and Shardul (Mahesh Shetty).
This cosy little triangle has no place for Ashu, and once again, he finds himself on the periphery, desperate to get an in. As he tries wriggling into his brother's personal and professional spaces — getting close to Max's svelte wife (Sarah Jane Dias) and daughter, and hovering around Max and his bros — he finds himself constantly rebuffed. His only solace is another old friend Amy (Trinetra Haldar), who used to be Amay, and who now runs a tiny bakery in one of those picturesque Goan villages.
Speaking of which, one of the best aspects of this eight-part show is the way it uses Goa as a living, breathing space and not just as a series of beaches and bikinis. Max has his eye on a large swathe of land, run under the iron hand of local heavy Deshmukh Bai (Usha Nadkarni, cast against type) and her nephews. Expectedly, there's pushback at Max and co's attempts at taking over their land for 'development', and he finds himself between a rock and a very hard place, with his politician uncle (Anant Jog) putting the screws on him.
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Old hurts rise to the surface. Ashu stammers. Or at least he used to, while being bullied mercilessly by the trio he is trying to ingratiate himself with. Did he also go to jail for a crime he did not commit? We see him leaning on prisoners placed strategically in the same cell as him, encouraged by a sturdy cop (Heeba Shah); we see the emergence of a man who can become an earworm without anyone realising it.
While 'Kankhajura' is filled with good performances — everyone does their job well — the writing doesn't surprise as much as it could have. There's also the standard difficulty of everything becoming a stretch because of the eight-episode mandate: so much could have easily been scrunched.
It is Roshan Mathew who draws us in, and keeps us there. His sinewy performance, which mixes guile and vulnerability in equal doses, is wonderful: it's got to the point where I will watch anything with him in it, even as he draws circles around the rest of the cast.
Kankhajura cast: Roshan Mathew, Mohit Raina, Sarah Jane Dias, Trinetra Haldar, Ninad Kamat, Mahesh Shetty, Heeba Shah, Usha Nadkarni, Anant Jog
Kankhajura director: Chandan Arora
Kankhajura rating: 2.5 stars