Afsos Review: Yeh Series Mein Dum Nahin Hai

Afsos(Amazon, 8 Episodes)

Starring  Gulshan Devaiah, Anajali Patil, Heena Shah

Directed  by Anubhuti Kashyap

Rating: **(2 Stars)

On the  theoretical level, this  is  a potentially interesting premise for a  series. A  morose  man with a death wish who  wants to end  his life, but can’t . So he hires  professionals to do the needful.That’s it!

Or maybe that’s not  enough to take us, kicking and dragging, through eight plodding episodes shot with all the  gusto of a dentist performing  molar surgery. Painfully  stretched-out with the  intended dark humour failing  to  acquire the  required colour,  Afsos, is just one of those pale frail  stale  promising  ideas that remain unexplored  and  unfinished.

The talented Gulshan Devaiah  plays Nakul, a man so obsessed with death he wants  it at any cost. Gulshan  gives the suicidal character his  best shot. Not that he seems  to have anything to be specially despondent about.Maybe he’s bored. Maybe he  just doesn’t want to watch serials like Afsos in his spare time.  

Director Anubhuti Kashyap and the Show’s group  of writers spend little time in   preparing a  back story  for Nakul. Nor  is  his  relationship with his  girlfriend(Anjali Patil, wasted) given  space to develop.There is  more thought  going into  the  lethal link that grows between Nakul and a coldblooded assassin named Upadhyay who is  given the task of finishing off  Nakul.

 Interestingly the  assassin Upadhyay is a woman and played by Heeba Shah who manages to make  the character  more dimensional than the  comicbook  mood  of  the  series suggests.  Heeba’s Upadhyay  loves to listen to  Beethoven and  paint male models(some of them without clothes) in her spare  time.It’s a character begging to have  her own independent show some other time.

 In  the meanwhile we return to Nakul who  wants to be dead. He should binge-watch Afsos. He  will die of boredom.