Sex, Lies and Murder in Noida Suburbia

Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper | Writer Puneet Krishna | Cast: Manav Kaul, Tillotama Shome | Hindi | Netflix

DESIGNED IN THE lurid colours of AH Wheeler bestsellers, Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper makes no bones about being what it is. It is a potboiler replete with sex, murder, love, betrayal, and more murder. It is also about female desire and men who know how to fulfill it. There is a homemaker who struggles to make ends meet, buying clothes on sale and baking cakes on a broken-down oven. There is the bored wife of a rich sweetshop owner with a deadly side business who is yearning for the kind of romantic love she has seen in cinema. And there is another seemingly placid wife of a crooked insurance agent who is cooking up a get-rich-quick scheme. The men exist, either to pleasure them, torture them or adore them. Perhaps the sharply observed series would have done better as a slice-of-life story set in middle-class Noida, but crime sells as does sex. Manav Kaul plays Tribhuvan as a wide-eyed common man who decides to sell the only skill he has apart from honesty—the art of satisfying women sexually. Tillotama Shome is lovely as the rich, lonely woman with an unlimited amount of cash, lost in a dreamworld of romance. And then there is a running debate between two minor characters, like Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are engaged in a long-term debate on whether Shah Rukh Khan is better than Salman Khan.

Why watch it? It’s witty, surprisingly direct about what women want, and passes no moral judgment on its characters

Coming of Age in Baltimore

Lady In the Lake | Cast: Natalie Portman, Moses Ingram | Director: Alma Har’el | English | Apple TV+

A BESTSELLING NOVEL by a woman writer, an accidental murder, a strong female friendship. Hmm, where have we heard this before? It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a female superstar in possession of a great screen career must be in want of a streaming hit. So, much like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon before her, Natalie Portman turns to Laura Lippman’s bestseller, Lady in the Lake, about two women in 1960s Baltimore and a missing child. It’s visually stunning, even delirious in its treatment and its story of a woman realising her worth resonates in every age. Is it real or surreal?

Why watch it? Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram go head-to-head and toe-to-toe in some exceptional scenes

entertainmentLady In the Lakestreaming businessTribhuvan Mishra CA Topper