Mirzapur Promises To Be A Glorious Bloodbath

First things   first.  It feels  reassuring and comforting to see the very  gifted Pankaj Tripathi finally taking centrestage. He was  plainly riveting as the  Shakespearean  mafia don in Shankar Raman’s  Gurgaon.  He returns to play a restless  crimelord with a  problematic son  in Mirzapur, Amazon’s new bust-or-boom series which promises  a fusillade  of  flamboyant  fights and bloodshed.

It’s a world that  perhaps Coppola  or Scorcese  would approve of. There is sly deceit and  tormenting teachery as Tripathy’sKaleen Bhai(he deals in carpets)  tried to control his wild son, played by that extraordinarily credible actor Divyendu Sharma, last seen stealing every scene  from Shahid Kapoor  in  Batti  Gul Meter Chalu. I suspect  there are only scene-steelers  no scene-stealers in Mirzapur.

 Divyendu Sharma  is  the  Sonny Corelone of this sanguinary saga  of internecine  wars  where I suspect most characters would lie dead at  the end of the series. Till then the show offers us  dollops of aggression and trippy retribution served up  with a dash of humorous relish. I  like the way Ali Faizal has bulked up and  trimmed his  hair to look menacing and the super-talented Vikrant Massey looks positively mousy as  his  sibling. These two brothers promise to turn the rugged  terrain  ofMirzapur into an area of a  subverted Mahabharat.

 The  series is  splattered superbly actors. Rasika Duggal turns up as Pankaj Tripathi’s  sex-starved wife  reminding him that he always leaves her unfulfilled.
I suspect we  won’t come away from the series with that feeling.