Karma Calling review: The heavy lifting is left to Raveena Tandon
New Delhi:
A murder on the beach shakes Alibaug’s swish set out of its self-absorbed stupor. Positioned as both an introduction and potential final work Karma is callingA seven-part Hotstar special series, Souchna points out what lies ahead for residents of the seaside enclave of the affluent.
A young woman is scurrying about with revenge in her mind. The girl’s main target is a 1990s Bollywood diva-socialite and her family. It’s easy for an overbearing matriarch to protect her turf. On the personal front, however, life is not a smooth ride for him. Her husband strays and runs away with it. His children do not see eye to eye with him.
As life unfolds, dark secrets, internalized anger, extramarital affairs, nefarious conspiracies, fake friendships and blatant betrayals surface and shatter a carefully constructed facade. The plot, busy and overheated, has momentum.
Karma is calling Revenge moves forward in time to provide context for the story. But that doesn’t entirely take away from his outstanding by-the-numbers approach to a story that’s been told before.
In each episode, the revenge-seeker focuses his attention on one man — a whole bunch of them — who wronged him and his righteous father two decades ago and went unpunished. He is now back to settle the score.
On her toes and unyielding, the lady is meticulous in her planning. More often than not, he catches his prey unawares and reaps the consequences. But despite the plethora of twists and turns Karma is calling Throws at Us, the show, adapted for India (from the American series Revenge) and directed by Ruchi Narine, is nothing short of an edge-of-the-seat humdinger.
That revenge Karma is calling Served cold – and stale. The picture-perfect setting and glammed-up people who inhabit the space are overwhelmingly inert when they’re not completely static and dull. This is not to say that the show is boring in every way. It springs to a bit of life now and then, but the truly interesting, impactful moments never last long enough to lend the series.
An engagement party is disrupted when the man of the hour goes missing. He was found lifeless on a beach. Cut six months ago. Manoram Karma Talwar (Namrata Sheth) rents and then buys an Alibag bungalow next to the city’s most famous address, Kothari Mansion.
The mansion is where Indrani Kothari (Raveena Tandon) lives with her unfaithful husband Kaushal (Gaurav Sharma), Harvard-returned son Ahaan (Varun Sood) and restless daughter Meera (Abdya Devanshi Sen).
Kotharis are ruthless power players who go hand in glove with their other money manipulations. But all is not well in the world. Karma finds an opportunity in the deepening conflict and looks for a vantage point from which he can begin his mission to destroy Indrani Kothari’s family and business empire.
Private jets and lavish homes, charity galas and polo matches, intimate family dinners and glamorous dandiya nights are an integral part of Indrani Kothari’s life. The sudden appearance of the mysterious Karma Sword puts him on his guard.
The family’s head of security, Sameer (Vikramjit Birk), and Indrani’s assistant Yana (Amy Ayala), approach the vigilante woman as she tries to figure out what brought Karma Talwar to Alibaug. The audience obviously knows what he’s doing so we’re always one step ahead of the characters.
Karma’s father (Rohit Bose Roy in a special appearance) was a senior employee of the company owned by the Kotharis. Caught in a bank loan scam he had no hand in, his life and career are ruined. His daughter wants justice for him now.
All sorts of people – a top lawyer-turned-MP (Shataf Figar), who wants to be India’s law minister, a healer (Alpana Buch), who runs a shady trust that receives donations from the Kotharis, Indrani’s best friend Dolly Bhatia (Walucha Dey). Susa) and, of course, Indrani’s immediate family – are in the blaze of action.
Indrani and Kaushal’s marriage hangs in the balance, their son has no patience for his mother’s ways, and the girl is a rebel determined not to play by the rules set by her mother. Two Kothari births create many crises as they seek to overcome social barriers that prevent them from entering the world and doing their own thing.
Action strategies are endless. He gets help, much of it unwanted, from brilliant entrepreneur Jane Khan (Viraf Patel). The man has ties to his unhappy past. So does cafe owner Vedant Koli (Abirbhut Singh). Karma’s relationship with neither of them is easy.
When Karma and Ahaan move into a tentative relationship, trouble mounts for Kothari and their acquaintances. Revenge-seeking acts often threaten to set him back. But he is determined not to deviate from his path.
It’s not a cakewalk. Against female action stands a formidable opponent who is not given to half measures. Besides, the latter’s right-hand man is ready to go to any lengths to protect his boss. The grudge fight between the two women serves the purpose of driving the series forward.
But as Karma is calling Dart from one thing to another, it often flounders and loses its way. Over-explaining character motives and plot points blunts the edges of the story and pushes the series into a rather disjointed loop.
In her second web series, Raveena Tandon is the lead. He never stops trying to hold Karma Calling together but receives little significant support from the rest of the cast.
What most of the actors bring to the table, including Namrata Sheth, who plays the lead role in the show, is nothing to write home about. They are adequate at best because they wait and wait for a miracle to happen and escalate proceedings. Since this never happens, all the heavy lifting is left to Raveena Tandon. It weighs him down – and the series.
