Connect with us

OTT

4 Amazing Amazon Prime Web Series That You Probably Missed.

Published

on

Amazon Prime Video

Amazon Prime Web Series: Here is the list

Breathe(2018) on Amazon Prime

I  was hooked  from the word  go, when in a preamble that rivals the opening montage  of the James Bond films—spoiler ahead–a young  girl is seen wrapping her head with plastic to commit suicide on camera. It’s an astounding opening to a cat-and-mouse thriller packaged and  executed with the panache and  precocity  of a Clint Eastwood cops-and-robbers films, replete with dialogues that embrace  colloquialism and conceits  without filtering,  but with more time to let the characters and grow…and well, breathe…than allowed  in  a feature film.

While it would be imprudent to give  away  the many twists and turns as  the drama  unfolds, suffice  it to say that the production design and  the  manner in which the camera  captures the frenzy and anguish  of the two protagonists , both perched precariously on  the precipice  of self-destruction, is  a testimony to the testosterone level that the series aspires to an largely, achieves.  The  performances of Amazon Prime web series range  from the outstanding to the  extremely competent.

There  is  no scope  or patience for  tackiness in profile personality or  performance here, as one expertly-executed incident  supersedes another with barely any breathing space. Special mention must be made of  Amit Sadh as  a burnt-out cop—obviously inspired by the genre’s  swaggering prototype  from Hollywood…you know, the  cop who is grieving and drinking and sulking and abusing constantly? The last time  an actor in Bollywood pulled off such an act with credible flamboyance  was  Randeeep Hooda in Jannat 2.Amit Sadh  imparts  his own individual stamp on the part. He gets terrific support from Marathi actor Hrishikesh Joshi as his family-oriented erectile-dysfunctional partner.

There is a brilliant sequence  in  the second episode where Sadh’s cop character visits  Joshi’s home . The responses of his family to the visitor are astutely  authentic and  engaging.But above all Breathe  is a triumph for Madhavan. As Danny, a straitlaced  upright whitecollar  man and a grieving desperate father who goes to shocking lengths to save his little son’s  life, Madhavan expresses grief, rage, frustration, guilt, repentance and self-destruction  with measured excellence. This  is  a showcase for an actor at  the peak of his power. And  boy, does Madhavan embrace  the opportunity!

There  is an anguished  plea for human-organ donation underlining the drama of  dysfunctional morality. But except for one sanctimonious outburst in a hospital lobby where Madhavan tries, rather naively,  to convince the son of  a dying man  to donate  his  organs with statistics thrown in for good measure, you are not subjected to moralizing in the 8-part Amazon Prime web series

A  lot of detailing has gone into  making  the plot and its execution uniformly watchable. You  will find it hard to resist watching the entire series in one go.But then, the beauty of  a finite series is that it keeps you talking about the  plot and characters until the  next episode.  Breathe gets that, and almost everything else, right.

Seasons
Created By
Writers
Plot
Kabir, a brilliant but non-conventional officer of the Crime Branch, puts the pieces together of seemingly unconnected deaths of organ donors that lead up to an unlikely suspect – the affable Danny. Kabir will not stop till he cracks the case and delivers justice.

[tnm_video layout=”mnmd-post-media-wide”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v91vyMR-fuU[/tnm_video]

4 More Shots  Please(2019) Amazon Prime

There’s something  sexily seductive  about  a web series that stars  only  goodlooking sassy women grappling with problems related to their  heart and, ahem,vagina. What happened to  all the not-so-goodlooking women? Are  they shooting for Ekta Kapoor’s tv serials?In  one  of  the Amazon Prime web series 10 episodes  of 4 More Shots Please  we  have all the four chic protagonists, sitting together at the  seaside shouting out  the various slang that  are synonyms  to  ‘vagina’. Needless to say we won’t get this level of sexual frankness  in  our  movies .No, not even in  Veera Di Wedding which  was an unabashed celebration of sisterhood.  But did  the four  friends discuss masturbation and  the size of men’s  penis? They do in this series.

Deal with it.Whether we  actually WANT this  level of  frankness is  entirely  our choice. But the  four  spunky  bright  actresses   sure add  a spark to their spiked dialogues  as  they throw off their high heels, get off the high horse  for some serious  fun.The  very talented  and  beautiful  Kirti Kulhari plays Anjana who selfadmittedly hasn’t had sex since her daughter,  now  4,  was born.She talks to her vagina and, surprise,  the vagina talks back.

Monologues be damned.Intelligently  attractive Sayani Gupta  is  Damini  a  no-holds-barred investigative  journalist  who has the  hots for the friendly bartender(Prateik Babbar, suitably beefy and  affable)  and for the neighbourhood autumnal sex symbol(Milind Soman who looks  a bit lost ).There  is  also  a dog  in Damini’s  life that needs   serious attention.Since  Maanvi Gagroo is an  overweight  actresss  her character Siddhi is battling weight  issues and  her overbearing but  beautiful  mother(Simone Singh)’s constant attempts to  get her married.

This track could have done with a bit more push and heft.It seems somewhat flat in comparison with the rest of the provocative proceedings.The most interesting  of  the  four protagonists  is  Umang(veejay Gurbani) ,a  lately-uncloseted  bi-sexual who  flees her conservative Punjabi home to  a  red-hot smouldering attraction to an aging but  still-sexy actress(Lisa Ray, every bit the femme fatale).All the four actresses get into the  mood of  the moment  ,immerse  themselves into  preying on   rather than  playing their  characters,  enjoying every morsel of the delectable writing(Devaki Pandit,  take  a  bow) , juicing every dramatic and comic scene  with a  relish that replicates  the closing  moments of  sexual intercourse.

The  bonding among the  four friends seems  credible  not because they  swear by one another,but because they often sweat AT one  another. Close friendships are not just about sugar and honey. They can  get bitter and ugly, as  it often does  among the  quartet  of friends here, played with unpunctuated breathless  yet breezy  expertise  by Kulhari, Gupta, Gurbani and Gagroo. Ladies, you rock!The  supporting cast is also very attractive . An actor like Neil  Bhoopalam knows  how to  create space  for himself.

No character serves the purpose of  a space  filler. The Amazon Prime web series  episodes  move  at a taut but  fluent pace whipping up a lather  of  luscious  emotions, all fairly pleasant but not afraid  to reach out to  the darker  moments when needed. Four Shots More  Please  addresses  itself to the urges,  vaginal  or otherwise, of urban working class women. In that endeavour  , you may feel these  smart sexy urbane  women of the  web  serials are defiantly  obliterating the reality  beyond  the  metros. But  then, who here is claiming to be  a social reformer? These ladies only want to live  life  queen size, tequila  shots  on  the house. More power  to them.

Seasons
Plot
Four unapologetically flawed women live, love, blunder and discover what really makes them tick through friendship and tequila in millennial Mumbai.

[tnm_video layout=”mnmd-post-media-wide”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7NCW8gMtVs[/tnm_video]

Made In Heaven(2019) Amazon Prime

This is the sexiest webseries India has produced, no doubt about it. The love scenes, both hetero and homosexual, look real with the actors letting loose the kind of unbridled physical passion that was so far forbidden in Indian cinema.Welcome to the hormonal revolution.

In fact one of the earliest episode of this nine-episode entertainer had the protagonist Shobita Dhulipala and her screen-husband Jim Sarbh with their hands, legs and tongues all over the screen. Such lack of inhibition is the most refreshing. Bring it on. Say hello to this bracing antidote to repression. Every major character in “Made In Heaven” Amazon Prime web series is waiting to break free from one form of repression or another.

Shobita’s character Tara who comes from a humble middle-class background, has married into money and now ‘money’ is cheating on her with her best friend. You can’t have your diamonds without sleepless nights.Sleepless nights, reminds me of Arjun Mathur’s character Karan Mehra who is a closeted homosexual yearning to come out, grappling with emotional and financial problems. Together these two very fine actors, Arjun and Shobhita, plot and plan through a string of affluent weddings, lavish on both food and feud, fuelled by desire and desperation and a longing to find a more relevant core in their plush lifestyle than what is affordable to the senses. Some of these characters are wretchedly unhappy.

I mean, how successful can a marriage be when the wife-to-be sleep with a Bollywood superstar (wishful casting of Pulkit Samrat) who is invited to perform at her wedding? Or a tycoon’s sole male heir (the underused Pavail Gulati from the miniseries “Yudh”) who tells his parents that his wife is no goldigger and that the child she aborted in the past was his, when it was not?Lies seem to fuel the passions of these inflamed characters.

A simmering discontent underlines the well laid-out drama, like a still blue pool that whirls and swirls underneath. Accordingly, the truthful moments shine brightly in the series. There is this epiphanous encounter between our hero Karan and his snoopy landlord’s zany daughter (Yashaswini Dayama, wish there was more of her in the series) when he catches her smoking and reprimands her, and she tells him he shouldn’t stay out all night. They both know each other’s guilty secrets and are comfortable in their knowledge. The writing (Reema Kagti, Zoya Akhtar, Niranjan Iyenger, Alankrita Shrivastava, Vivek Anchalia) is fluent and feisty.

The dialogues hit the right notes without putting too fine a point on it. While the surfaces glisten with gloss, this is not a series that wallows in superficial glamour. Not by half.Issues on societal hypocrisy (Arjun runs into a lover all set to marry an unsuspecting bride who when confronted hits back with, “Will you marry me?” )A run through Amazon Prime web series creating a tingling spine of revelations on topics that cinema refrains from exploring.

The performances range from outstanding to satisfactory, and the quality doesn’t depend on the length of the character’s role. Shivani Raghuvanshi has less playing time than the other protagonists. But she nails it as a small-towner Jazz (real name Jaspreet), revelling in the life of the rich and the privileged. Though a brunt of sniggers, it is Jazz who often comes up with solutions in deadlocked weddings.

Seasons
Plot
The story of two wedding planners in Delhi, where tradition jostles with modern aspirations against the backdrop of big fat Indian weddings revealing many secrets and lies.

[tnm_video layout=”mnmd-post-media-wide”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0UkDQaR5KQ[/tnm_video]

Inside Edge  Season 2(2019) Amazon Prime

Here in the second season  of Inside Edge the  momentum and  velocity  of Season 1  are maintained. Not once  in  the  first  five  episodes  did I feel  the characters or the narrative  were  dragging their feet. The passion and energy  of  the cricketers,  and of the cricketers’  mentors and manipulators  flows without  any stressful  push  from the serial’s creators.

The push,if any,comes from the  drama itself.Season 2 opens with a kickass preamble where a hotshot tv journalist (no resemblance  to Arnab) crosses the  line while interview  the powerful IPL baron Bhaisaheb (Amir Bashir,  splendidly  reined-in and  enigmatic) and pays for it with his  job which he loses with one text message  sent from Bhaisahab’s  phone, Immediately we know the  pursuit of and passion for power remains uncompromised in  the series even as these exceedingly ambitious  entrepreneurs  and sportspersons manipulate every rule in  the  book of life  and ethics to get what they want.

This  riveting Amazon Prime web series ambitious people wouldn’t have  worked without  the  ambitious  writing. The  screenplay allows the characters to float  freely and then drown in their own ambitious. That almost  all the actors get the point, helps  pump up the adrenaline level even further. I found every  actor to be outstanding. But special mention must be made of Aamir Bashir, Tanuj Virwani(as a hotheaded star cricketer, get it?), Angad Bedi(playing the only morally correct  character  among the shortcut seekers)  Richa Chaddha, Siddhant Chaturvedi(as  the paranoid panic-stricken smalltown cricketer his  role is here is a far cry from his cocky aggressive Gully Boys), Manu Rishi and Sayani Gupta.

These  are sparkling performances, that shine when  applied to  situations and dialogues that are  dramatic  without going over-the-top.Observe  how Richa’s  Zareen Malik  manipulates her way into the  powerful  IPL, sorry PPL  baron undermining the  sports baron’s own daughter(Sapna  Pabbi)’s prominence. The  crackling  but curbed chemistry between Chadda and Aamir Bashir blows the  screen apart.

You don’t have to be  a cricket fan  to enjoy Inside Edge 2. What this handsome series says about arrogant ambition and self-destructive  pride is  applicable  to every walk of life.What this series  could have avoided are  an overdose  of  one-liner  googlies .They tend to get in the way  of  the real issues. Also , why the stereotyping of Pakistan? When Vivek Oberoi lands in Lahore  to threaten/cajole/seduce  the  vice president of the Pakistan cricket team  everything including the vice president’s shirt turns green.And the song Khai ke paaan baneraswala is translated in the subtitles as ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’.

Plot
The story of the Mumbai Mavericks, a T20 cricket franchise playing in the Powerplay League. Set in a landscape of conflicting interests, where selfishness is almost a virtue, where sex, money, and power are mere means to an end, Inside Edge is a story that pulls no punches, minces no words, and takes no prisoners. Come witness the game behind the game.

[tnm_video layout=”mnmd-post-media-wide”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es_cjyjeYbc[/tnm_video]

Continue Reading
Comments