Mumbai’s Underbelly

Murder in Mahim | Cast: Vijay Raaz, Ashutosh Rana | Director: Raj Acharya | Hindi | JioCinema

WHEN YOU HAVE two actors of the calibre of Vijay Raaz and Ashutosh Rana facing off against each other, you can expect much dialogue baazi. Murder in Mahim doesn’t disappoint on that front. As Shivajirao Jende, a police officer who has lost his mojo, Raaz gets everything right: the seething angst, the bent shoulders, the slightly quizzical gaze. He’s a man with multiple worries: a father whom he doesn’t get along with, a son he is on the verge of losing and a wife with whom he is forever in combat. As Peter Fernandes, a former journalist, Rana is a good man if somewhat judgemental. A running theme through the series, based on Jerry Pinto’s book, is the discrimination against the LGBTQ community and the need to remove Section 377 from the Indian Penal Code. While the latter has been lifted, the former continues. The series takes us into the seamy world of young boys called Battery, Unit and Proxy, who will do anything for money, and older men who take advantage of that. For the young men of the slums, Mumbai is a prison where they can’t even dream beyond the bars. For the police, they know the law is designed only for the comfort of the powerful. As for the journalists, they remain the last bastion of hope, the only ones who seem keen to get to the bottom of the truth.

Why watch it? Excellent performances by the two male leads and a deep sense of the grit and grime of Mumbai at night

On the Road with Two Edgy Women

The Veil | Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Yumna Marwan | Creator: Steven Knight | English limited series | Disney+Hotstar

Phoebe Waller Bridge has a lot to answer for. She re-energised the romcom and forever changed the espionage genre, keeping women front and centre of it. The Veil tries to follow up in the Killing Eve genre, mixing bloody hits with genteel pit stops in exotic places. It begins, very James Bond-like, with Elisabeth Moss cutting through the ice to get to a refugee camp for Syrian women. There she must pick up Adilah (Yumna Marwan), who may or may not be an ISIS commander. The road trip back to Paris is a cat-and-mouse game, which is part character sketch and part interrogation. There is Dali Benssalah, Moss’ Parisian handler and Josh Charles, as a most American spy. Both Moss and Marwan share a love for Shakespeare and the series is dotted with many quotes. Moss, for some reason is playing an Englishwoman with a wobbly accent. There is talk about chaos and broken humanity but unlike Homeland, which seemed ahead of the curve in international geopolitics, The Veil’s theatre of action seems to have been overtaken by the reality of Ukraine and Gaza.

Why watch it? Elisabeth Moss always lights up the screen with her intensity and the Lebanese actor Yumna Marwan is a find

Disney+HotstarentertainmentJio CinemaMurder in Mahimstreaming businessThe Veil