Netflix Saturdays: Betaal (TV Series)
It's perhaps not a secret that I get drawn to zombie series or movies easily.
There's something primal and raw about the notion that you don't really die - and are still stuck in that no-man's zone between death and life. Countless movies and books have done this right. And I think the trick to get it right, of course is the human elements that constitute the drama, with the zombies being another layer to the mounting levels of tension. Americans have made this a regular feature on their yearly movie-list. Hollywood searches for humour in this undead-genre. (Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, too many to name here!) On the grim-dark human drama side, there's The Walking Dead (This series is something I haven't yet watched, might get around to it later) or gritty action-packed Val Helsing. The Koreans, however, excel in this. ( like a lot of other genres I suppose!) - The Kingdom was such a treat, masterpiece. Or the Train to Busan - one of their best exports to world cinema on zombies. A treatise really on zombie-movie making.
And then there's Betaal.
If it's the Indian entry to the Zombie Olympics, then sadly we finish at the bottom of the pile. Horrendous is not enough to describe the disaster that Betaal, the latest 'original" Netflix India series is. It is so wrong at multiple levels. I watched the trailer a few weeks before it released and while I was excited and intrigued that Netflix India is willing to experiment with their viewers with such diverse content [ Go Goa Gone is perhaps the only Indian zombie movie that I think, qualifies for halfway 'decent' ] I wasn't enthused.
I had just finished watching Pataal Lok [ an excellent black noir thriller that explores the evils of casteism and hinterland politics of an India we haven't seen before!] and so my hopes were up. The premise of Betaal seemed pretty intriguing.
A centuries old curse, set in the middle of a deeply forested naxal-ridden hinterland of somewhere in the North. A corrupt contractor who wants to build his highway into this area and decides to bring a private mercenary army to safeguard his interests. And when the enforcers blow up an ancient tunnel, hell breaks loose. An ancient army of undead British soldiers who were buried ages ago inside the tunnel are let loose. What transpires next is one hell of harrowing night for the heroes of this military squad.
So far, so good eh? But executing an interesting storyline onto the screen masterfully, is a difficult task altogether. While the first episode wasn't too bad, by the second episode, that scree-fall of tiny faults rapidly became an avalanche. I was bored at first and then I just watched so I could pick the holes in the logic of how it evolved, the size of those plot-holes becoming bigger and bigger.
Narrative: The storyline went from average to bad to worse. First episode introduces the corrupt contractor stuck in the middle of a jungle, trying to negotiate with the villagers to evacuate the area so to blow up an ancient tunnel and make space of a highway. Maybe it is summer vacation and hence, he decides to drag his reluctant wife and his absolute dork of a daughter to the middle of a naxal-ridden sweltering hot jungle, along with his assistant (?). To get things moving when he hits a dead-wall with the reluctant villagers, he brings in the CIPD. I might have missed this but for the longest time, I was scratching my head whether this is a government military organisation or a private mercenary squad. Because there is rank and order, they are extremely well equipped [ unlike a government enforcement squad! including state-of-the-art machine guns and night-vision gogs] and they are national news - Young men aspire to join the elite "Baaz" squad. And their commander is a tough-talking no-nonsense lady called Tyagi Ma'am, who again is a legend for the squad members. ( Suchitra Pillai in fine fettle) Yup - there is a lot of fandom going on internally, where every other junior rank hero-worships their seniors. It's like the heirarchy of hero-worship.
Anyways - while the squad makes short work of evacuating the stubborn villagers [ they are given the story that these are naxal insurgents who are possibly national threats and need to be taken care of. While the soldiers - some of the smarter ones, like DC Ahlu realise that these poor villagers who barely are clothed and carry pitch forks and farm equipments in protest, can hardly be a national threat - are a bit suspicious, they are good soldiers and follow "commands". This is a constant theme in the series. The antagonists also use similar tactics to get their work done. [ it's a fucking hoot, where in one scene the chief antagonist - the zombie king if you will - whispers into the hero's ears that he's a good soldier and will follow commands!] The tension mounts however, as by the end of first episode, our band of heroes who venture into the blown up tunnel, realise something is amiss. Evil has just been let loose. But the evil takes the shape of "undead British soldiers" out for world domination led by this indomitable Colonel John Lyndoch who's an absolutely ruthless warlord who possibly wanted to rule India in that time of 1857 [ Sigh. Like the East India Company would have let him, huh] Then there is info-dump galore as random characters start spouting history to fill in the gaps for our understanding. By the time, the zombie soldiers come out of the forest and the tunnels holding up their musket-guns [ that can fire absolutely fine, no rust, no locking up of their firing-pins despite having been buried deep inside the earth for more than 150 years and counting] I was ready to give up. There are soldiers who constantly scream in the background, "B***C****, chal nikalte rain. bahut ho gaya." Exactly how I felt.
Characters:
The hero is Vikram Sirohi - essayed by the talented Vineet Kumar Singh. Now this guy, second in command to the squadron leader Tyagi Ma'am is the dumbest fucking soldier I have seen onscreen. Some of his actions and his leadership skills are spectacularly stupid. His decisions defy any logic, thwart common sense and I was left screaming at my TV screen, Back off M****C****, that is so stupid, even my six-year old nephew makes a better commander than you. A man haunted by his mistakes in his previous missions, the way this guy fluctuates between inaction and disbelief at what is happening around him, is phenomenally unbelievable. The heights of a poorly written script for him is the scene where the evil colonel possesses his spirit.
The best of them were two women characters. DC Ahlu essays a lot of spitfire attitude, ready to question the high-command, the only one who holds her common-sense sacred under these pressing circumstances. But her demise [ Oh am sorry, was that a spoiler?] is one of the highest nominations for the Darwin awards. She literally walks up to one of the "bad" guys when he whispers to her that he can help her get out of this situation. Gun uncocked by her side, literally unarmed, even offering her lame neck up to be slashed. Like I could see that from miles away that her throat will be slashed open. She just steps up to that altar herself. Are you asking me, what is worse than THAT?
She lies on the ground, being devoured by the zombies, her throat bleeding like a BBMP tanker sloshing water on the roads and she is still screaming at the top of her voice, "Choke on me, motherfuckers." I was appalled, to say the least. You just killed one of your best characters in the lamest way possible.
The second of them, Puniya is again one of the most spirited characters of the series, Puniya - a tribal woman from the village who knows the secret of the Betaal and is a badass with a sickle. But she gets her game up during the series, switching from a simple grass-cutting sickle to an automatic glock - and then finally graduating her way to an AK-47 by the last episode, full panache and mumbaiya slangs as she leans out of a speeding jeep, spraying fire and bullets at the hapless zombies all around, all the while screaming curses. She is a villager who has never seen a weapon before in her life. Steep Learning Curve Successfully Mounted, in a matter of seconds. And very funny how she switches fluently into mumbaiya curses from her jharkandi dialect in those scenes.
Tyagi Ma'am actually was not bad at all. Her actions are dictated by her greed and is consistent. Despite being taken over by the Colonel half way through the series. The "kid" at the centre of this all, is again one of the most inconsistently written characters. Stupified by fear, unable to act on anything. Fuck, she is not even able to decide what to call Vikram Sirohi's character - referring to him as 'Vikram Uncle', 'Sirohi Uncle', or plain old cool-speak 'Sirohi' at different times. [eye-roll]
Acting: Despite a few dependable talented actors like Suchitra Pillai, Jeetendra Joshi and Vineet Kumar Singh in the reckoning, it just fell through. Jeetendra Joshi, possibly going to be a Netflix fixtures like Radhika Apte, unfortunately is wasted in that role of the corrupt contractor. He does succeed in making the audience hate him right from the start, a shifty shady greedy bastard but some of the scenes are cringe-worthy. Like he actually negotiates with the zombie king about sharing power with him, like zombie know anything about ethics. Then he is sitting inside a cage near a sacrificial altar holding up a bomb, god knows for what and telling his daughter not to press the trigger. [ the same girl he has beaten up black and blue, a few scenes back. Sigh] Both Vineet Kumar and Suchitra Pillai try to infuse the dead scripts with some life, but it just isn't enough to make this zombie series feel any better. Only Aahana Kumra was a delight to watch. The others should all possibly go back to National School of Drama to practise a bit.
Cinematography: Grey screens, with foreboding skies letting loose with the rain. Dark within the forests, crumbling demonic statues and haunted temples. The camera-work has a very narrow focus and after a while, you have seen it all. Certain shots are admirable, giving you the heebie-jeebies, the scares and the jumps in the dark. But once the Eddie-lookalikes come marching out, beating their drums in the pouring rain, you are actually cheering that lone soldier picking them out one by one, with his machine-gun near the door. Spouting inane nonsense like, "this is for Jallianwallah-bagh, motherfuckers." And lots more reason, he's got to pick bones with the British. Including, wait for it, "Brexit". [I rest my case!]
Anyways, to summarise, Betaal is dead on arrival.
British Soldier Zombies cannot save the game for Red Chillies [ after the Bard of Blood bombed out] I fervently pray that Dibakar Bannerjee makes a full-featured zombie series for Netflix to save our name.
There's something primal and raw about the notion that you don't really die - and are still stuck in that no-man's zone between death and life. Countless movies and books have done this right. And I think the trick to get it right, of course is the human elements that constitute the drama, with the zombies being another layer to the mounting levels of tension. Americans have made this a regular feature on their yearly movie-list. Hollywood searches for humour in this undead-genre. (Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, too many to name here!) On the grim-dark human drama side, there's The Walking Dead (This series is something I haven't yet watched, might get around to it later) or gritty action-packed Val Helsing. The Koreans, however, excel in this. ( like a lot of other genres I suppose!) - The Kingdom was such a treat, masterpiece. Or the Train to Busan - one of their best exports to world cinema on zombies. A treatise really on zombie-movie making.
And then there's Betaal.
If it's the Indian entry to the Zombie Olympics, then sadly we finish at the bottom of the pile. Horrendous is not enough to describe the disaster that Betaal, the latest 'original" Netflix India series is. It is so wrong at multiple levels. I watched the trailer a few weeks before it released and while I was excited and intrigued that Netflix India is willing to experiment with their viewers with such diverse content [ Go Goa Gone is perhaps the only Indian zombie movie that I think, qualifies for halfway 'decent' ] I wasn't enthused.
I had just finished watching Pataal Lok [ an excellent black noir thriller that explores the evils of casteism and hinterland politics of an India we haven't seen before!] and so my hopes were up. The premise of Betaal seemed pretty intriguing.
A centuries old curse, set in the middle of a deeply forested naxal-ridden hinterland of somewhere in the North. A corrupt contractor who wants to build his highway into this area and decides to bring a private mercenary army to safeguard his interests. And when the enforcers blow up an ancient tunnel, hell breaks loose. An ancient army of undead British soldiers who were buried ages ago inside the tunnel are let loose. What transpires next is one hell of harrowing night for the heroes of this military squad.
So far, so good eh? But executing an interesting storyline onto the screen masterfully, is a difficult task altogether. While the first episode wasn't too bad, by the second episode, that scree-fall of tiny faults rapidly became an avalanche. I was bored at first and then I just watched so I could pick the holes in the logic of how it evolved, the size of those plot-holes becoming bigger and bigger.
Narrative: The storyline went from average to bad to worse. First episode introduces the corrupt contractor stuck in the middle of a jungle, trying to negotiate with the villagers to evacuate the area so to blow up an ancient tunnel and make space of a highway. Maybe it is summer vacation and hence, he decides to drag his reluctant wife and his absolute dork of a daughter to the middle of a naxal-ridden sweltering hot jungle, along with his assistant (?). To get things moving when he hits a dead-wall with the reluctant villagers, he brings in the CIPD. I might have missed this but for the longest time, I was scratching my head whether this is a government military organisation or a private mercenary squad. Because there is rank and order, they are extremely well equipped [ unlike a government enforcement squad! including state-of-the-art machine guns and night-vision gogs] and they are national news - Young men aspire to join the elite "Baaz" squad. And their commander is a tough-talking no-nonsense lady called Tyagi Ma'am, who again is a legend for the squad members. ( Suchitra Pillai in fine fettle) Yup - there is a lot of fandom going on internally, where every other junior rank hero-worships their seniors. It's like the heirarchy of hero-worship.
Anyways - while the squad makes short work of evacuating the stubborn villagers [ they are given the story that these are naxal insurgents who are possibly national threats and need to be taken care of. While the soldiers - some of the smarter ones, like DC Ahlu realise that these poor villagers who barely are clothed and carry pitch forks and farm equipments in protest, can hardly be a national threat - are a bit suspicious, they are good soldiers and follow "commands". This is a constant theme in the series. The antagonists also use similar tactics to get their work done. [ it's a fucking hoot, where in one scene the chief antagonist - the zombie king if you will - whispers into the hero's ears that he's a good soldier and will follow commands!] The tension mounts however, as by the end of first episode, our band of heroes who venture into the blown up tunnel, realise something is amiss. Evil has just been let loose. But the evil takes the shape of "undead British soldiers" out for world domination led by this indomitable Colonel John Lyndoch who's an absolutely ruthless warlord who possibly wanted to rule India in that time of 1857 [ Sigh. Like the East India Company would have let him, huh] Then there is info-dump galore as random characters start spouting history to fill in the gaps for our understanding. By the time, the zombie soldiers come out of the forest and the tunnels holding up their musket-guns [ that can fire absolutely fine, no rust, no locking up of their firing-pins despite having been buried deep inside the earth for more than 150 years and counting] I was ready to give up. There are soldiers who constantly scream in the background, "B***C****, chal nikalte rain. bahut ho gaya." Exactly how I felt.
Characters:
The hero is Vikram Sirohi - essayed by the talented Vineet Kumar Singh. Now this guy, second in command to the squadron leader Tyagi Ma'am is the dumbest fucking soldier I have seen onscreen. Some of his actions and his leadership skills are spectacularly stupid. His decisions defy any logic, thwart common sense and I was left screaming at my TV screen, Back off M****C****, that is so stupid, even my six-year old nephew makes a better commander than you. A man haunted by his mistakes in his previous missions, the way this guy fluctuates between inaction and disbelief at what is happening around him, is phenomenally unbelievable. The heights of a poorly written script for him is the scene where the evil colonel possesses his spirit.
The best of them were two women characters. DC Ahlu essays a lot of spitfire attitude, ready to question the high-command, the only one who holds her common-sense sacred under these pressing circumstances. But her demise [ Oh am sorry, was that a spoiler?] is one of the highest nominations for the Darwin awards. She literally walks up to one of the "bad" guys when he whispers to her that he can help her get out of this situation. Gun uncocked by her side, literally unarmed, even offering her lame neck up to be slashed. Like I could see that from miles away that her throat will be slashed open. She just steps up to that altar herself. Are you asking me, what is worse than THAT?
She lies on the ground, being devoured by the zombies, her throat bleeding like a BBMP tanker sloshing water on the roads and she is still screaming at the top of her voice, "Choke on me, motherfuckers." I was appalled, to say the least. You just killed one of your best characters in the lamest way possible.
The second of them, Puniya is again one of the most spirited characters of the series, Puniya - a tribal woman from the village who knows the secret of the Betaal and is a badass with a sickle. But she gets her game up during the series, switching from a simple grass-cutting sickle to an automatic glock - and then finally graduating her way to an AK-47 by the last episode, full panache and mumbaiya slangs as she leans out of a speeding jeep, spraying fire and bullets at the hapless zombies all around, all the while screaming curses. She is a villager who has never seen a weapon before in her life. Steep Learning Curve Successfully Mounted, in a matter of seconds. And very funny how she switches fluently into mumbaiya curses from her jharkandi dialect in those scenes.
Tyagi Ma'am actually was not bad at all. Her actions are dictated by her greed and is consistent. Despite being taken over by the Colonel half way through the series. The "kid" at the centre of this all, is again one of the most inconsistently written characters. Stupified by fear, unable to act on anything. Fuck, she is not even able to decide what to call Vikram Sirohi's character - referring to him as 'Vikram Uncle', 'Sirohi Uncle', or plain old cool-speak 'Sirohi' at different times. [eye-roll]
Acting: Despite a few dependable talented actors like Suchitra Pillai, Jeetendra Joshi and Vineet Kumar Singh in the reckoning, it just fell through. Jeetendra Joshi, possibly going to be a Netflix fixtures like Radhika Apte, unfortunately is wasted in that role of the corrupt contractor. He does succeed in making the audience hate him right from the start, a shifty shady greedy bastard but some of the scenes are cringe-worthy. Like he actually negotiates with the zombie king about sharing power with him, like zombie know anything about ethics. Then he is sitting inside a cage near a sacrificial altar holding up a bomb, god knows for what and telling his daughter not to press the trigger. [ the same girl he has beaten up black and blue, a few scenes back. Sigh] Both Vineet Kumar and Suchitra Pillai try to infuse the dead scripts with some life, but it just isn't enough to make this zombie series feel any better. Only Aahana Kumra was a delight to watch. The others should all possibly go back to National School of Drama to practise a bit.
Cinematography: Grey screens, with foreboding skies letting loose with the rain. Dark within the forests, crumbling demonic statues and haunted temples. The camera-work has a very narrow focus and after a while, you have seen it all. Certain shots are admirable, giving you the heebie-jeebies, the scares and the jumps in the dark. But once the Eddie-lookalikes come marching out, beating their drums in the pouring rain, you are actually cheering that lone soldier picking them out one by one, with his machine-gun near the door. Spouting inane nonsense like, "this is for Jallianwallah-bagh, motherfuckers." And lots more reason, he's got to pick bones with the British. Including, wait for it, "Brexit". [I rest my case!]
Anyways, to summarise, Betaal is dead on arrival.
British Soldier Zombies cannot save the game for Red Chillies [ after the Bard of Blood bombed out] I fervently pray that Dibakar Bannerjee makes a full-featured zombie series for Netflix to save our name.
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