Killer Soup (Netflix, 8 Episodes)
Starring Manoj Bajpayee, Konkona Sen Sharma, Nassar, Sayaji Shinde
Directed by Abhishek Chaubey
No wonder Manoj Bajpayee thinks Abhishek Chaubey to be the best director he has worked with. Look at the performance that Chaubey gets out of Manoj in Sonechiraiya and now Killer Soup.
There are two Bajpayees in Killer Soup, one of them with his wild hair and pained expression looks quite like Chaubey Himself. The other Manoj Bajpayee goes around with a mutilated eye which would be unbearable to look at were it not attached to the face of an actor who can make even the most unbearable character trait bearable with the sheer grit of his performance.
Manoj is at once fiercely satirical and slyly poignant as a puppet on his wife’s string. Konkona is everything evil, plus more. She seems to enjoy the opportunity to portray toxicity. I wish the thunderously scattered plot had focused more on the Bajpayee-Konkona equation.
Everyone is out to get the better of everyone else, none more so than Swati (Konkona Sen Sharma) who is the diabolic mastermind of this plot deviously demolishing every definition of love trust and fidelity.
The performances are exceptional, not only Manoj and Konkona (who are the most unromantic lowdown jodi ever) but also Siyaji Shinde as Manoj’s foul-mouthed brother, Nassar as a bumbling drunken cop, the powerful Lal as Siyaji’s right-hand man (and maybe much more) , Mallika Prasad Sinha as a herbal heretic cum cook and clairvoyant (yes, the series is baggy enough to accommodate all these qualifications in one character) and Anbu Thasan as an earnest cop who gets bumped at the end of the second episode and appears as a ghost for the rest of the series.
Killer Soup is a wild unpredictable rollercoaster ride into the most savage recesses of the human heart where there is no room for genuine empathy.
