STORY: Saif Ali Khan plays Samar Pratap Singh, the son of a two-term Prime Minister. Tandav opens with PM Devki Nandan on the verge of claiming another victory in the General Elections. Samar, who Saif essentially plays as a trust fund kid, also has designs on the top job
The new nine-part web series Tandav wears its politics on its many sleeves, the action divvied up in a couple of parallel strands. There’s the ‘strong’ party which has been in power for ‘two terms’, with its ruling satraps, uber ambitious leaders eyeing the ‘kursi’, and faithful henchmen (and women) who know that real power vests in those who stay behind the throne, because they can see the enemy most clearly.
It’s an out of place role when it comes to Saif performance, one that robs the character of all considering the sheer potential of the material. It is a very basic plot
So when Samar hatches a scheme to fill the power vacuum left by his father’s sudden death, he makes the strange decision to blab about it to virtually everybody within earshot. Those who aren’t privy to his plans — including a journalist — get a prompt phone call from Samar, filling them in. How could he have expected his masterplan to unfold smoothly when he can’t even be trusted to keep his mouth shut? This is not an exaggeration; in one scene, Samar, as if possessed by the spirit of a James Bond villain, narrates his methods to the person he has just poisoned. You almost expect him to provide them the recipe for his deadly cocktail next.
TANDAV REVIEW; LACKS THE PUNCH ONE WOULD EXPECT
Samar might as well have been twirling his moustache, or stroking a cat. “How obvious,” he scoffs in one scene, having correctly predicted his opponent’s next move, as if he is smarter than everyone else. He is not. Everyone else is simply as dumb as him. There’s a difference.
This superficial approach extends to the supporting cast as well. A coke-snorting scion is always sniffling; and every time Dimple Kapadia entered the scene, I expected her to laugh maniacally. Tandav is a show that rarely scratches beneath the surface. It’s a lesson in civics for 5-year-olds. It belongs, to use the most unflattering comparison, to the Aashram school of storytelling. The theme music is suspiciously similar.
The show dabbles in ideas that are frankly too complicated to be executed in a manner such as this. Better minds than series creator and director Ali Abbas Zafar have tried and failed to make sense of student demonstrations and farmers’ protests — both of which play important parts in Tandav. So while Samar’s story unfolds in the upper echelons of Indian politics, a parallel plot plays out in the campus of a fictional university, clearly modelled after JNU.
I understand why they have to do this, but creating fictional stand-ins for real organisations, people, and locations, only pushes the show further into the realm of fantasy. For instance, in one scene, Gauahar Khan’s character is contacted by an anonymous caller, and promised some vague ‘saboot’ of Samar’s misdeeds in exchange for an exorbitant amount of cash. Maithili — that’s Gauahar’s character — is instructed to bring the money and dump it inside a trash can in the South Block. She does this in broad daylight, wearing the most fabulous sari, and manages to complete her task without a hitch. In real life, walking down Raisina Hill with a suspicious package would be like performing an actual ‘tandav’ outside the Rashtrapati Bhavan. You’d be pinned to the ground in no time.
By taking this ridiculous tone, Ali and his team completely ignore the moral questions at the centre of stories such as this. When the primary objective is to pull the rug from under the audience’s feet, over and over again, you lose sight of the larger themes that should’ve been examined instead. What drives Samar to do these dastardly acts? We’ll never know. Or perhaps it’ll be addressed in later episodes; Amazon provided only the first five for preview.
Tigmanshu Dhulia, however, is terrific as Devki Nandan (who is eliminated after episode one, in the first of the show’s many missteps), as is the always excellent Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub as a firebrand student leader. Even the hokiest of lines sound believable when delivered by them.
Sandhya Mridul says her character in Tandav gave her the opportunity to tap into the emotional and sensitive side of her personality.
Performance wise every actor in the series have tried to deliver their best -Dimple Kapadia as the power-hungry Anuradha Kishore, Kumud Mishra as senior party leader Gopal Das, always the bridesmaid, never the bride, Sunil Grover as Gurpal, Samar’s ruthless yesman, Gauhar Khan as Maithili, the canny woman behind Anuradha, Anup Soni as Kailash, the lower caste leader who knows the value of holding on to anger. And on the other side, Zeeshan Ayyub as dynamic student leader Shiva Shekhar, Kritika Kamra as his complex compatriot Sana, Sandhya Mridul as a feisty professor, Dino Morea as a two-faced bridge between the two sides.
- Creator: Ali Abbas Zafar
- Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Mohd. Zeeshan Ayyub , Sunil Grover, Kritika Kamra, Kumud Kumar Mishra, Sarah Jane Dias, Dino Morea
- No. of episodes: 9
- Storyline: A high-stakes drama that pits campus activism against national politics