From creators Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar, Prime Video's new crime drama series Dahaad pits a small-town cop against a menacing serial killer of women. The eight-episode show stars Sonakshi Sinha in the lead role of a tough-as-nails cop, while Vijay Varma plays the assassin. Dahaad (which means "roar" in Hindi) is set in the heart of India.
The drama unfolds when several women are found dead under mysterious circumstances. Although initially assumed to have died by suicide, after eloping with her partners, Deputy Inspector Anjali Bhaati (Sinha) discovers patterns linking the deaths. Suspecting the worst, she searches for clues that lead her to Varma's creepy antagonist: an unassuming-looking "family man" named Anand, whom she describes at one point as a "demon." He first appears in the middle of the trailer, apparently teaching very young children a lesson in morality. “God is watching,” she says quietly, warning the children to behave.
Stars: Sonakshi Sinha, Gulshan Devaiah, Sohum Shah
The trailer doesn't simply set the stakes and leave the rest to the imagination; it actually shows Anjali confronting and arresting Anand. But she is met with rejection from her partner (played by Gulshan Devaiah) and other detractors, who refuse to believe that such an ordinary person, a teacher, could be capable of committing such terrible crimes. The show also seems to tackle small-town Indian sexism, when Anjali is teased by a couple of young men and she hits it back. But all references to casteism and right-wing nationalism, alluded to in an earlier description of the show, are completely absent from the trailer, which ends with a rather ominous scene in which Anand repeatedly tells a woman that "smile". .”
Varma is coming off possibly the most acclaimed performance of his career, in Netflix's dark comedy Darlings. By the way, he also played a similar monster in that movie. The up-and-comer previously appeared on Netflix's A Proper Boy and She. He will next star in the Bollywood adaptation of The Devotion of Suspect X. Sinha, on the other hand, needs a win. Having started out on the biggest scale possible (she debuted opposite superstar Salman Khan in the 2010 blockbuster Dabangg), her career has been marred by a series of failed attempts at leading roles.
The very rustic Dahaad, which premiered in the Berlinale Series section at this year's Berlin Film Festival, marks a change of pace for Kagti and Akhtar's Tiger Baby Films, the production company behind brilliant titles like the hit series from Prime Video's Made in Heaven and the upcoming Bollywood adaptation of The Archies comics. But Akhtar and Kagti have a brilliant track record as filmmakers with a particularly strong voice. His most acclaimed project remains the rap drama Gully Boy, which was selected as India's official Oscar entry in 2019 after opening, as Dahaad, in Berlin. The movie essentially introduced Varma to the world. In Dahaad, Tiger Baby is collaborating with Excel Entertainment, a production company known for its more populist entertainment, co-owned by Akhtar's brother, Farhan Akhtar.
The series is co-directed by Kagti and Ruchika Oberoi and will debut on Prime Video on May 12.
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