Genre: Black Comedy Thriller
Language: Hindi
No. of Episodes: 8
Writer: Dibya Chatterjee, Anirban Dasgupta, Sourav Ghosh
Director: Anubhuti Kashyap
Cast: Gulshan Devaiah, Anjali Patil, Heeba Shah, Robin Das, Aakash Dahiya, Jamie Alter, Shyam Bhimsaria, Sulagna Panigrahi, Ratnabali Bhattacharjee, Danish Sait
Music: Neel Adhikari
Casting: Parag Mehta
Editing: Prerna Saigal
Introduction:
This series is about suicide attempts, assassinations, quest for 'amrit' and 'amar' aka the elixir of life and the immortal respextively.
Plot:
'Afsos' is a totally out of the box TV series which opens with the scenes wherein -
- the protagonist Nakul (Gulshan Devaiah) is hell bent on committing suicide and attempts the same repeatedly in vain!
- a foreign scientist Dr. Goldfish (Jamie Alter) is conducting a seminar on immortality and ways to achieve it.
- one fine morning, all the sadhus of a remote ashram in Uttarakhand are found shot dead, barring Fokatiya Baba (Robin Das), who has supposedly ran away to Mumbai with the 'amrit' potion, which was rumoured to have been present inside the ashram!
The ashram massacre happens the very next day of a media publishing about the 'amrit' present therein and Ayesha Mirani (Sulagna Panigrahi), the concerned lady reported is lambasted by her boss for such an irresponsible and superstitious publishing. She is asked to stop pursuing the fictionary 'amrit' trail and follow another story about an operational suicide service, run by Maria Gomes (Ratnabali Bhattacharjee), that professionally assists people in committing suicides, both by motivation, as well as, assassination!
This same squad has been recruited by Nakul to fulfil his desire of dying and the contract of his assassination has been given to Upadhyay (Heeba Shah), a no nonsense hitwoman who leaves no stone unturned to finish her job at hand and is immune to collateral damages involved.
However, Nakul's shrink Dr. Shloka's (Anjali Patil) expression of love towards himself motivates him to cancel the aforementioned contract. After some tussle, though Maria agrees to do the required cancellation, but Upadhyay is hell bent on killing Nakul and that too with an added vengeance because in continuation with his trait of failed suicide attempts, he keeps on dodging Upadhyay's bullets.
On the other hand, to investigate the mass massacre of Uttarakhand sadhus, the local inspector of that region, Bir Singh (Aakash Dahiya) arrives in Mumbai to nab Fokatiya Baba.
Alongside, Dr. Goldfish and his team of musclemen also arrive in Mumbai in pursuit of amrit.
As if all the aforesaid pursuits were not enough, both Fokatiya Baba and Dr. Goldfish are also in pursuit of a one and only immortal person on Earth, the 'amar' entity who holds the unique power to immortalize someone else other than himself!
How all the aforementioned personalities cross each other while pursuing their independent pursuits and how their personal stories get inter connected is for yours to watch.
Analysis:
It's a very well made series with good script, casting, direction, acting, background score and editing.
All the actors look the part and have performed well, but Gulshan Devaiah is a treat to watch. Using minimum dialogues and few solid expressions, he has amazingly portrayed the character of the suicide seeking lad, who has absolutely no will to live or fear to die.
Ratnabali Bhattacharjee, as the practical businesswoman who provides suicide assistance without batting an eyelid, but also loves her kid daughter and is against collateral damage is an interesting study.
In this series, people get killed every now and then, both intentionally and unintentionally, but fail to give any tug to your heart strings. May be, that's how the series' creators intended them to be.
Conclusion:
It's an engaging and taut thriller with no edge of the seat drama but an altogether different thought process.
