Mistry, a Jio HotStar series in the news for all the wrong reasons, is a pale shadow of the original American series Monk about a detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) with obsessive–compulsive disorder. Given an Indian context, the series, more than its protagonist , suffers from some sort of a disorder.
The trick of making the quirky detective work is to not allow him to take himself serious, This, Tony Shalhoub achieved with minimum strenuousness in the original. Monk in Mistry transforms into Armaan Mistry. As played by Ram Kapoor, he seems to be on a vague romp with no particular agenda except to be weird and wise, and more capable of solving each case than the cop on duty Sehmat Siddiqui (Mona Singh).
Sehmat seems constantly stressed. Is it the pointlessness of the whole exercise which bothers her? The cases that Armaan and Sehmat, in that order, solve, are neither exciting nor rewarding . God Dammit, they are not even worth our while.
Nothing here that gives us ‘goosedumps’ (as Sehmat’s assistant, one of those typically bullish cops who need to be constantly restrained, calls them). As far as murder mysteries go(don’t think Agatha Christie) these cases don’t need investigation, they need a hurried closure and a quick burial. They define “cold case” with a freezing impact.
Everything feels frozen and sterile in Mistry, least of all the dead bodies which seem more live than the busybody characters who define pointless lassitude.
There are an assorted number of cases to be solved, and Armaan’s assistant Sharanya (Shikha Talsania) behaves as if she would rather be anywhere else than at the scene of the crime with her boss who acts as though he has seen Shah Rukh Khan in My Name Is Khan on a loop and has come away impressed.
Director Rishabh Seth allows Ram Kapoor no room to innovate or even move an inch away from the original version. Resultantly, the character seems stilted and frozen. We gather Armaan Mistry has gone through a rough past. But do past traumas cause OCD? Or is this a fake medical prognosis to go with the rest of the show?
I watched three of the cases one after another, and then gave up. Nothing here to set the mind rocking and rolling. The first case is about a politician, his sassy intimidating wife and a suave killer. The revelation at the end is so lame it feels like a joke. The second “mystery” about a psychic named woman named Dolly Futurewala (how illustrative!) is even duller. The third story about a cop who unintentionally kills an informer is slightly less sluggish than the first two case studies which feel like amateur detective classes at a primary school. Season 2 of Mistry? No can do.
