Exceptionally well-mounted and engaging show
A one-eyed crime branch detective dealing with a troubled past and a series of bizarre murders Inspector Rishi The spin-off Amazon Prime Video series mixes the rules of a police procedural with the chills of a supernatural horror drama It does a nifty job.
The series opens in the heart of a dense forest where a mass suicide takes place in what appears to be an occult ritual. Many people jump into the pit of fire. Twenty years later, the region witnesses mysterious deaths attributed to an evil spirit. Each of the victims is found in a gossamer web spun by an insect.
The police and forest department must have been shocked by the murder. They have very little real formula to work with. The leads they follow are often cold. Atrocities, murders, mischief–nothing they can stir up by wandering in the dark. Inspector Rishi might invite comparison with two other recent Prime Video Tamil-language thrillers (Sujol: Vortex And Badhandhi: The Fairy Tale of Veloni) which explores the spectral zone between and around myth and reality, fact and fiction. But it certainly doesn’t stick to the same generic groove.
Writer-director Nandini JS takes the audience into a world where the secrets hidden in a lush forest collide with the misfortunes of mankind and the resulting misfortunes. The series is impeccably crafted, brilliantly lensed, expertly acted and consistently pulled together (which is no mean feat for a series spanning ten episodes). However, there is a distinct disconnect between how the Inspector begins and how it ends. The first five episodes of the thriller are almost flawless. The clash between rationality and imaginative ambiguity is examined in a clinical but compelling manner.
But once the fog starts to lift and the focus shifts from the mystical to the more mundane, the impact of the story diminishes significantly, especially because the script can’t go beyond the obvious and predictable.
Episode 6 is almost entirely devoted to filling us in on the details of Inspector Rishi’s past. He narrates his story to a forest beat officer, Catherine Sobhana (Sunaina Yela), who is assigned to be a police officer’s guide in the jungle like the back of his hand.
what Inspector Rishi The occasional lack of basic narrative power is amply compensated by superb camerawork (Bharghav Sridhar), first-rate production design (K. Kadhir) and a sound design (by Tapas Nayak) that gives the show a solid aural dimension.
Not to be forgotten, Aswath’s top-notch musical score plays an important role in amplifying the turmoil that people face when overcome by fear and confusion.
what Inspector Rishi The myths and underlying belief systems that inevitably exist at the fringes of a world of human greed and exploitation are skillfully investigated. It places opposing worldviews alongside each other and observes their dynamics as they play out from the perspective of detached minds. Inspector Rishi Nandan (Naveen Chandra) is sent from Chennai to Thayenkadu jungle, 50 km from Coimbatore, to dig deep into the truth. His arrival with sub-inspector Ayana Murthy (Kanna Ravi) does not go well. Never on the same page by nature, the two men take time to get used to each other.
Sub-inspector Chitra Lokesh (Malini Jeevanratnam) strikes a balance between Rishi and Aynar but her own life is not all sorted. Three cops charged with cracking the case have to deal with their own problems even though the tough assignment leaves them with little time for anything else.
Aynar’s marriage is marred by the superstitions of his parents, with whom he is unable to stand as he cannot live without his wife Jamuna (Misha Ghoshal), a woman not easily manipulated emotionally. Chitra, who bonds with Aynar despite being nothing like an orthodox person. Her life itself is an act of rebellion – a fact that affects her work methods and her relationships.
The sharp-minded, highly observant Rishi struggles with frequent migraines and an eye he lost in the line of duty. But he keeps his head up and dives into a serial killing case with his wits about him that hangs somewhere between the familiar and the confusing. No matter what the people of the hill town believe and what his colleagues assume about potential criminals, he does not waver from his rational thinking.
The sage refutes the stories told about Banarachi, a spirit who watches over the forest. Working with forest range officer Satya Nambisan (Sreekrishna Dayal) and the latter’s seasoned man Irfan (Elango Kumaravel), he digs his heels in. The man came off an emotional rollercoaster that ended in tragedy He believes that “our brains are capable of intense imagination and we can see things that are not really there”. Cathy, a forest ranger who grew up in an orphanage, isn’t so sure. Suffering from one relationship, Rishi is on the hunt for another.
Nandini’s script draws much of its strength from the conflict that alternates between the illusory and the poignant in a story that inevitably uses ambiguity to keep the audience invested. What the characters see on screen and the clues they discover and try to interpret in light of their own perceptions add interesting layers to the narrative.
Like the inspector of his creation, the director of the series must strike a balance between two conflicting experiential domains and mindspaces in which the search for the unspecifically concrete creates a set of challenges. He hits the right spots frequently to make this a series worth watching. Despite its misguided flaws, Inspector Rishi An exceptionally well mounted and engaging show.
