'Saare Jahan Se Accha' review: Netflix spy series is a missed opportunity

Mint

2 days ago

Saare Jahan Se Accha spends most of its time listing differences between India and Pakistan. But Netflix's new spy series can't help draw attention to a common heritage: language. Characters switch naturally between Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and English, as so many did in undivided Punjab. The Punjabi in particular—spoken by Pakistani and Indian characters—is mellifluous, flowing off the tongues of the actors, not the same intonations you'd hear in a modern Hindi film. It reminded me of Song of Lahore (2015), Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's musical documentary, with the Punjabi session players hitting the consonants in trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' name: 'Vin-ttun'.
The show, created by Gaurav Shukla, opens with conspiracy theory (the CIA blowing up a plane with Indian nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha on board) and boilerplate spy drama truths (we operate in the shadows, our families don't know what we do). Both are delivered in a flat voiceover by Pratik Gandhi, who plays intelligence agent Vishnu Shankar. After the formation of RAW in 1968, its head, R.N. Kao (Rajat Kapoor), sends Vishnu on a top-secret mission: relocate to Islamabad and sabotage Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
Vishnu's primary asset there is Sukhbir (Suhail Nayyar), alias Rafiq, an Indian posing as a Pakistani stockbroker. Rafiq, a capable but reluctant spy, helps corrupt lieutenant colonel Rizwan (Kapil Radha) with his investments, and is wooing his sister, Naseem (Diksha Juneja). Vishnu, tailed and intimidated by local agents despite ostensibly being a diplomat, carefully pulls strings too. He pushes Naushad (Anup Soni), a Pakistan army brigadier whom they've been blackmailing, and tries to win over Fatima (Kritika Kamra), an anti-bomb journalist who happens to be nuclear engineer Munir Khan's niece. Seemingly ahead at every step is Murtaza Malik (Sunny Hinduja)—'Pakistan's most capable officer', in the words of President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
From the moment he's introduced, the show has a problem. Murtaza is simply more interesting than Vishnu. Hinduja plays him with a mixture of sardonic reserve and restless intelligence. It lends a tension to every scene he's in, even when the situation doesn't warrant it—we can't tell how closely he's reading into his close friend Naushad's behaviour, and it keeps us on edge. He's as formidable a spy as Vishnu, but happier in the spotlight, wittier and more commanding.
Vishnu, on the other hand, never feel right at the centre of the show. Gandhi is a deft actor who was working steadily in the theatre and Gujarati cinema before Scam 1992 thrust him into lead roles in Hindi films. In Saare Jahan Se Accha, you can feel the tension between a character actor who'd relish the challenge of making a drab agent interesting and a star who's supposed to carry the production. Vishnu is a cypher, as spies must often be, but Gandhi can't find a way to make this shadowy figure compelling. He keeps losing scenes—to the confident Hinduja, to Tilottama Shome, rather wasted here as his confused, neglected wife, and to Nayyar, whose Sukhbir turns out to be the sad heart of the series. I couldn't help but imagine a richer, more complex show built around Sukhbir: a fascinating figure, resourceful, lonely, an Indian pretending to be Pakistani, a Sikh posing as Muslim, blackmailed by his country, with genuine attachments to the people he's spying on.
There are recent shows that have gone all-out with period recreation (Jubilee) and those that managed it with a few smart touches (Rocket Boys). Saare Jahan Se Acha tries the latter, but, apart from a sequence at a screening of cult horror film Zinda Laash, the research and detailing are inadequate. The clothes, the hair, the speech, the cultural markers—little of it suggests a convincing 1970s Pakistan. 'Tumhare takes kya hain?' is something you wouldn't hear today, let alone 50 years ago.
Rajat Kapoor may be styled to look like Alec Guinness' Smiley, but Saare Jahan Se Acha doesn't want to be John le Carré. In its better moments, it has some of the enjoyable pulpiness of the Yash Raj spy films. One of its episodes revolves around the capture of a minor antagonist named Bilal (Rajesh Khera), an arms dealer in London with a weakness for women. The multiple subplots—the race to extract information from Bilal, the kidnapping of his son back in Pakistan, Murtaza getting increasingly suspicious—are woven together nicely by editor Aarif Shaikh and Sumit Purohit, who directs all the episodes. I also appreciate that the Indian agents, till then less cutthroat than their Pakistani counterparts, are shown using torture, not on a particularly bad person, but one they need information from quickly. This and a messy kill in the previous episode go some way to dispelling the notion of a 'right' side.
There are only six episodes, each between 30-45 minutes—a fairly slim offering. Surprisingly, there's no real attempt to tease a second season. Vishnu and Kao spend all season insisting India isn't working on a nuclear bomb (it's described as a 'moral line', one that a nation like Pakistan would cross but we wouldn't). The truth is, India's nuclear weapons programme was very much in swing by then, culminating in the Pokhran-I tests. I thought the show might be saving this as the A-plot for Season Two, but was less certain once the 1974 tests were mentioned at the end of the last episode. Espionage is a saturated genre in India right now, and Saare Jahan Se Accha doesn't do enough to stand out. If it does return, I hope it's at least with a more stirring, less shaken protagonist.