Buoyed by the admirable performance but could have been more

Untold stories of unsung heroes can be tricky. They are often susceptible to exaggeration because they allow creators to be flexible with the truth while being “inspired by true events”. Getting the balance right is key. Part – you remember, only part and not the whole – of Railway menA four-part Netflix show, a touch struggling on that count.

Produced by YRF Entertainment, the limited series Forage, directed by debutant Shiv Rawel and written by Ayush Gupta, dramatizes the unspeakable Bhopal gas tragedy of December 2-3, 1984, and the reaction by city officials. Busy railway station.

On that fateful night, as the residents of Bhopal went about their lives, death overtook them. The Union Carbide pesticide factory sprayed methyl isocyanate (MIC) in their midst, a deadly gas that caused extensive damage.

It was a disaster predicted by an investigative journalist whose fictional avatar (played by Kal Penn in the 2014 film Bhopal – A Prayer for Rain) was strongly portrayed in The Railway Men by Sunny Hinduja.

The persistent journo who follows his lead with exceptional tenacity and repeatedly exposes the American firm’s lackadaisical approach to safety is the only major non-railway man in this story of bravery in the face of death and destruction.

Railway men Freely crisscrosses two parallel tracks – real and imaginary – without revealing points of departure or overlap. It’s clear that most of the main characters in the series are created by real people who were in the action that night and (in some cases) lived to tell the tale.

A major exception is a conman (Divyendu Sharma) who commits robberies on trains and at railway stations. He is an exotic invention whose purpose is to add to the conflict between morality and expediency and to create a conflict between the two poles of humanity.

At one end of this confrontation is a thieving opportunist caught in two minds when saving lives is paramount even though he has nefarious plans up his sleeve. On the other hand is a conscientious, steadfast stationmaster who pulls out the stops in the face of an unprecedented crisis.

The latter is battle-scarred “railway man” Iftekhar Siddiqui (KK Menon, brilliant), who puts his life on the line to save as many people as possible from the dangers lurking in the air. He is a character we truly invest in because his actions are completely self-indulgent, informed as they are by his sole purpose of doing what he does. He is a hero who doesn’t see himself as one – a quality that elevates him.

Rookie loco pilot Imad Riaz (Babil Khan, a chip off the old block who is simultaneously uniquely inspired in a role who has completely put himself together). He is another reluctant hero. He had inside knowledge of Union Carbide’s negligent practices, transporting barrels of MIC to the factory while working as a truck driver.

Rati Pandey (R. Madhavan), a senior railway official who is under a cloud for an unspecified job that has cost him his job, is cast in a different mold. He is an extraordinary type, an orator to stir a listless workforce into action. Both the characters and the acting are stuck in an exceptional territory.

The journalist echoes the real-life author who worked with whistleblowers to uncover the loss-making factory’s persistent and criminal safety violations. Imad is his main source of information as the young man was once an insider and was the reason Union Carbide defected.

The American head of the carbide plant (British actor Philip Roche) is the lone bad guy, the repository of all sorts of corporate scullery. He cavalierly downplays the risk MIC poses to the factory tank and brazenly tries to cover up when disaster strikes.

The context of that story Railway men Descriptions are well documented. It is the ‘untold’ part of the story that takes the show beyond the familiar. Because it follows the aftermath of tragedy, the series has more than its share of moments that linger. Why, then, does it leave one that you feel could have more to it? It’s hard to put a finger on it.

With actors aware of the realistic vein of entertaining an industrial disaster that took place four decades ago, Railway Men is never in danger of spiraling out of control. However, due to the multiplicity of characters crowding the narrative canvas, many of them, especially the women, are briefly crowded.

A Bhopal station cleaning lady’s daughter (Sunita Rajwar) is in the middle of her wedding when a gas leak occurs. Imad’s mother (Nivedita Bhargava) is not seen or heard beyond a couple of stray scenes. Two pregnant women, one the widow of a carbide factory worker (Annapurna Soni) who died on the job, the other another employee’s wife (Bhumika Dubey) have more footage but none of them come anywhere close to raising the men.

Juhi Chawla was cast as a senior railway officer who is the only woman in an emergency meeting called when the Bhopal tragedy threatened to go awry.

The series focuses on a male quintet, leaving little room for the women in their lives and surroundings to emerge from a high-density storyline that at times withers under its own weight.

Railway men There are several other male characters who receive some drama as a gas leak turns into a complete disaster. Raghubir Yadav is a train guard who protects a Sikh woman (Mandira Bedi) and her son against rioters.

Divyandu Bhattacharya as Union Carbide factory foreman Kamruddin and Srikanth Varma as Bhopal railway station worker Ishwar Prasad make strong presences that demand more footage.

Men face multiple challenges. They have to stop a passenger train carrying thousands of passengers to reach Bhopal Junction, hastily plan a relief train from Itarsi to the affected city and gather resources to run a train that can evacuate hundreds of people from the affected areas.

There is no apparent lack of drama Railway menWhich inevitably alludes to the anti-Sikh riots of a few months earlier – a TV takeover of Rajiv Gandhi’s “When a big tree falls…” speech turned it into a series – and the omissions and actions of the commission that followed. Tragedy and then let the wrongdoers go free.

Railway men Its voiceover introduction closes with something like we live in a country where criminals go unpunished and heroes go unrewarded, a statement made without any subtlety that suggests that truism isn’t just about the past and that May remain valid until this date

Railway men Buoyed by admirable performances and a touch of storytelling that never dips below a certain level of competence. But it could be much, much more.