Pandu S1: It Deserves Marketing Budget of Sacred Games
[Full Disclaimer: I’ve met three members of the cast & crew through stand-up comedy — Noel Cordeiro; Mandar Bhide; and Trupti Khamkar]
I don’t know how much this web-series spent on marketing but it is clearly not enough. Neither did I see #Pandu trending on Twitter nor was I repeatedly interrupted by its trailer on YouTube. Only yesterday, I discovered the full trailer on a friend’s wall and was completely blown away by it. When I commented on the trailer, the writer himself responded informing about the dates. I genuinely don’t know how much money marketing needs, but this series pays-off on so many levels, it needs to have at least as much to generate the same buzz as Sacred Games, if not more.
Non-Spoiler Review:
How many times have you seen cops on screen? How many times has it been the same old story with just the actors changed — Ardh Satya, Shool, Kurukshetra, Singham,etc., Either the character is cliche, some combination of a rogue-cop or ‘man vs system’. The way they are shown working is also cliche (Daya, Darwaza Tod Do!, Daal mein kuchh kaala hai, Encounter!, etc.,). It feels like there was one real police-officer in 1950s that was like that and he was genuinely portrayed by one writer but rest of the writers decided that was enough observation and just kept recycling the same character over and over again. So many decades have passed, and have only these aspects been explored in cinema or TV? Is that all we know of these police-officers ? This is what dawned on me after watching this series because it covers the world of policing with such compassionate detail.
It covered so many aspects — the children of cops; how cops attend Parents-Teachers Meetings; the working relationships; the frivolous cases; the extremely serious cases; the relationship with regular offenders of petty crimes; how the uber-rich treat them; and the cops’ mental states in the midst of all of this.
[Update: After writing this, I read a press-release of Pandu in Times of India where Director Saarang Sathaye says the exact same thing , which is tricky for me because it makes my original opinion feel like a paid piece. I assure this is what I honestly felt.]
This series reminded me of Clint Eastwood’s ‘Million-Dollar Baby’. Although the story was set in the world of boxing, it wasn’t about boxing, it was about the oddly touching relationships that develop in the world of boxing. It surprises you how sensitively touching this world of tough people can be. The web series ‘Pandu’ does that to the world of cops.
Each episode is self-contained and finds a different way to tug your heart-strings. When I watched the first episode and found myself thinking, I want to savor each episode of it a day at a time, but I felt the urgency to watch all episodes immediately because I needed to tell the world needs to know about this series. I don’t know if this article will do it but I hope whatever little it does, it will contribute for the better. [Update: I could finish this article after 10 days.]
Shout-out to Writers, Gaurav Pawar - Noel Cordeiro; Directors, Anusha Nandakumar & Sarang Sathaye; and the main cast — Suhas Sirsat, Deepak Shirke, Trupti Khamkar, Prasad Reddy, and rest of the crew for presenting such a wonderfully rich world of characters.
Spoiler-Filled Review:
Before reading further, I strongly suggest watching the series first. It’s worth your time. Alright, here we go.
Episode 1 — Paise Paise Paise:
In this episode, Sub-Inspector Kamble’s son asks him for football shoes which are on the expensive side, they go in an expensive shoe-store which treats them like dirt they have to rub-off. They go to a counterfeit store, where they get treated like kings.
That’s the basic gist of the main storyline which is sprinkled with wonderful details, conversations, and twists at every step. For instance, they’re inquiring about why a particular shoe costs Rs.3000 and why the other costs Rs.5000. The answers are from the high-end store is something inane like — there are extra pairs of laces, and a player’s there. When they go to the counterfeit store, Abdullah (played by the director Sarang Sathaye himself) presents a whole different version of counterfeiter from what you’d expect. He’s warm, cordial with police, even though he knows they’re going to stage a raid later. He comes off as a more truthful and a reliable person than the legit shop who feel like rip-off artists with more money. I wasn’t expecting this reversal (and insight). It breaks stereotypes without making any noise about it, you just feel it. I know it is effective because I’m still thinking about it.
Also worthy of note is the post-credits scene scheme they have come up with, it’s not a cliff-hanger or a call-back to what happened in the story before this. It hints at the story line in the next episode. That’s an approach you don’t get to see often in web series. They didn’t need to do it, but still deliberately putting efforts to make even that small part different, I feel, reflects a certain commitment towards the series that, often, is a sign that it is going to be good.
Episode 2 — Garibaansathi (For the poor…):
In this episode, Sub-Inspector Kamble comes across a obnoxiously rich woman who organizes a vague charity function, for the poor. The charity ‘for the poor’ is only accessible to the rich and at the end, the only people who end up doing anything for the poor are the poor themselves.
The ironic ending hit me really hard because it comes out of nowhere. All this while, I was gearing for some kind of come-uppance against the amazingly written character of Mrs. Sinha. She’s a rich-evil woman, but established very differently from other rich-evil women. They have not shown her as a sadistic person, that’s the easiest shortcut to show someone evil. She’s shown as a person who’s evil by her indifference, so self-absorbed she don’t even consider that she’s inconveniencing other people constantly. Once she blocks a whole road because she had to stop the car to apply make-up. Her rich-evilness is shown through small acts she does on everyday basis like when asked for a fine, she routinely gives Rs.2000 note and asks to keep the change. Every cop has a story about an offensive run-in with her. It had been a while since I saw an evil character that felt this real.
It’s not just her, it seems like the series has captured the nature of all the rich people. My favorite part of the episode was the instance where a cop describes how he was treated. He stops a Mercedez, the owner just tosses keys at him. The cop is angry at such disrespect, at first, but then decides to park the car because when else is he going to get to ride a Mercedez. I’ve been around some uber-rich folks and it feels exactly like that, you’re exposed to so many sweet opportunities sandwiched in a barrage of insulting moments that you don’t know how to feel about it. The series churns out such insightful moments alarmingly consistently.
Episode 3 — Stress Stress:
This episode shows how cops have to deal with frivolous cases. They get a call for a ghost. This episode works like a Scooby-Doo episode but extremely subtly. I was suspicious about the ghost the moment it chose to haunt a lower-middle class house. (As I write this, not kidding, my flat-mates just got a message about a haunted room. They’re going for a sleepover there, today)
I thought it was going to be just a funny episode, but it turned out to be a low-key who-dun-it. I wasn’t expecting that. They pulled it off so organically, I am still scratching my head on how they did it. Maybe it was because the characters shown that seemed so real. Maybe because I thought, writers would be so lazy they’ll show it’s a cat. They pulled off a decent mystery here.
There’s an awesome dialogue that I’ll probably use a lot. When one cop suggests taking a Tantric along to the haunted house, the other cop says that he’s not sure about that… to which the first cop replies back immediately, “That means you are somewhat sure. That’ll do for me.” In my life, I’ll have to collaborate with lots of people who won’t always be completely on board, I think this dialogue do it for me.
If there was anything that bothered me that was the performance of Tantric. I am not able to put finger on what exactly bugged me — Was it that in all the realistic characters, this was the only one that was a caricature? But then, Tantrics do have to have an exaggerated manner to sell their craft. Is it my bias against occult and superstitious practices that made me not like the character? Either ways, the episode, on the whole, was delightful enough to let that not bother me. I guess, the biggest mystery here still remains, how did they switch the genre while remaining in the same genre? I’ll be returning to this episode, repeatedly, to figure.
Episode 4 — Melancholy:
In this episode, Sub-Inspector Kamble comes home after a tiring double-shift and yet is unable to sleep, so he goes into deep thought. His child tells him he’s suffering from what Wordsworth calls ‘Melancholy’ and so begins his quest to find happiness, which he does, of course, in food.
My favorite and a weirdly deep scene is when Kamble is smoking on the roof, staring at the horizon, and his son joins him. Son tells Kamble that his condition was described by a poet. Kamble asks him, what did this western poet tell about his condition’s cure, to which his son replies, “I don’t know. We haven’t reached that part yet.” It’s weird but even this moment hit me hard, although I make fun of poets, and can’t grasp poetry all the time, it feels like poets grasped the human nature long before any psychologist did. How does a conversation that deep get featured in a web series about cops? My mind is blown every single time I think about it.
There was another scene that hit me hard (I use that phrase a lot, but this series had those many moments), when Kamble is behaving oddly, his colleague Gaikwad gently asks him to hand over his revolver. If this kind of camaraderie is shown in cinema, it usually means that colleague is going to die, otherwise no one really cares to show that sometimes even your colleagues also care for you, selflessly. As if cops in stories are incapable being kind to each other unless it is for some plot reason.
Episode 5 — Open Day:
In this episode, Sub-Inspector Kamble has to attend a Parent-Teacher’s meeting where he’s pressured into thinking about his son’s future immediately. He has no answers, and neither does his son, so he lashes at son. Later, of course, he catches a spoilt brat who’s drunken driving, who’s achieved all that an ideal son should achieve, yet is quite unhappy. At one, point the spoilt brat goes meta and spells out that Kamble is unloading frustrations of his son on him. (Writers writing that part into a story is akin to magicians telling how the trick was done, as a part of their performance)
There’s a scene that dropped my jaw and it could’ve easily outraged a lot of people had they seen it. A father drinks merrily in front of his under-aged son, asks him to join, and there’s no negative consequence. They genuinely have a heart-to-heart and that’s the end of it. Usually, when someone says that ending was unexpected, it almost always means that ending was shocking or pulled out of nowhere. This serial’s unexpected is different, it is more real than expected (or rather, expected to be shown) and that is an extremely good thing.
Episode 6 — Bandh (The Shutdown):
This is the final episode, it covers a riot. It doesn’t show anything gruesome, but it’s still tense as it shows the preparation for it. Imagine the last time your whole office receiving bad news at a time. Everyone may ultimately end up safe, but the lingering feeling of seeing so many people tense, feels like the world around you is collapsing. At first, I thought they were going to show a 26/11 like event and I was praying they don’t take that route. Although, many cops sacrificed their life, I for some reason think, using a shocking event to generate tension means the writer isn’t skillful to generate tension on his own. Thankfully, they didn’t. This was the second time, I suspected the writers might be lazy, and they proved me wrong by taking a different route. This episode ends on an interesting note which is again something that very few cop dramas have covered — Inspector Kamble shows signs of PTSD.
Final Verdict (Have to give verdicts because it’s a show on Cops):
This whole article was meant to be less of a review and more of an appreciation piece. I hope this series gets as much exposure as Narcos or Sacred Games did, and if not that, it at least becomes a cult-hit because if it does, the quality of web-series we’re gonna get is going to be just as exciting as any Netflix or HBO series. Please watch this series, it may just usher our era of golden content that the world will follow.