A pitch-black comedy, garnished by ‘paya’ soup over a dream serving of Manoj Bajpayee and Konkona Sensharma, and dressed with murder and mayhem? Sign me up already, I’d thought gleefully when I heard of 2024’s new web series, ‘Killer Soup’, directed by Abhishek Chaubey. And it crushes me to say this, but this concoction, which promised so much flavour and freshness, only bubbled up for me intermittently.
First, the plus points. The picturesque setting, in a small town close to Madurai called Mainjur, is perfect for a twisty tale dotted with dodgy characters and dodgier doings. Husband-and-wife duo Swathi (Konkona Sensharma) and Prabhakar aka Prabhu Shetty (Manoj Bajpayee) are in the middle of what seems like a permanent argument, her dreaming of a restaurant of her own, him trying to figure out how to get out of a multi-crore ‘ghapla’. Prabhu’s older brother, the street-smart, foul-mouthed Arvind Shetty (Saiyaji Shinde) is of no help, holding the family purse-strings close, and his art-loving daughter Apeksha aka Apu (Anula Navelkar) even closer, refusing to let her follow her heart. Arvind’s long-time factotum, the gravelly-voiced Lucas (Lal), knows where the skeletons are buried, and is a keeper of past secrets.
It feels like a great set-up for a fly in the soup. Or several. A jovial private eye, brandishing a camera, clicks incriminating photos. Blackmail is in the air. Prabhu’s lookalike, the squint-eyed masseuse Umesh Pillai (Manoj Bajpayee, in a double role), turns up at the wrong time in the wrong place. Bodies start piling up. Beady-eyed senior Inspector Hassan (Nasser) arrives on the scene, along with sturdy constable Asha (Shilpa Mudbi) and eager newbie Thupalli (Anbuthasan) and stirs things up. Who is that mysterious woman in a burkha? Where is the missing camera? Whose body is in that grave where the glittering fire-flies swarm?
It may seem like a lot, but over eight 45-50 minutes episodes, these plot points — apparently based on a real-life case — dissipate in writing that’s mostly flat and occasionally convoluted. Quirk is great when it is intrinsic to the characters and embellishes the story-telling, but here it feels grafted on. Watching this, I flash-backed to the delightful quirky touches in Chaubey’s ‘Ishqiya’ and ‘Dedh Ishqiya’: were there too many cooks here?
The whole idea of a black ‘comedy’ is that it is meant to be funny, and that it makes you chortle, despite yourself, but here I kept waiting for the laughs. I also kept waiting for shockers, also an essential black comedy component, but the proceedings bob along placidly. Where’s the urgency? Or the tension? Why is the Hyderabadi ‘khansama’ such an exaggerated note? Why, in fact, this obsession with badly-made ‘paya’ soup? We never really find out. And why, most crucially, don’t the uber-talented Bajpayee and Sensharma spark together? By rights, they should have set the screen ablaze.
Some detailing does have impact, especially when new faces show up. So many of the characters speaking in Tamil, just as they would naturally, is a terrific touch. I also sat up whenever Kalaripayattu expert Kirtima (Kani Kusruti, very good) showed up to demand her pound of flesh that weakened when confronted by her low-backed blouses. Or when the headstrong Apu, played by an effective Navlekar, tears into her dad who is incapable of speaking without abusing his mothers and sisters, a jarring note because it carries on for far too long: Shinde and Bajpayee worked together with more efficacy in the 1999 cop drama ‘Shool’.
The most excellent Nasser kept yanking me back into the thick of things just by being there. His old-timey cop who won’t stop, who knows when to use a slap, and how to meet a plank just right, measuring his length on the floor, is a delight. He is droll and sharp, as required, and the best part of this bland broth.
Killer Soup cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Konkona Sensharma, Nasser, Sayaji Shinde, Kani Kusruti, Lal, Anula Navlekar, Jasir, Rajeev Ravindranathan, Anbuthasan, Vaishali Bisht, Shilpa Mudbi
