The Best On The OTT In The Month That Was

July brought us  some  strange birds from the streaming platform, like Tarla on Zee5 which did to the culinary  queen Tarla Dalaal  what Shakuntala Devi had done to the mathematical genius. They both demythicized the two  larger-than-wife  housewives-turned-global-celebrities  shrinking them by several  sizes.

To snap  out of  the cooking catastrophe, there was  the heartwarming Sweet Karam Coffee on Prime Video. Just the pleasure of watching  the  legendary Laxmi( who  once played ‘Joyous Julie’)  back on screen, was  incentive enough to watch three generations  of  women from a family take off  on a  road trip. Many  road bumps  ahead,  but the intrinsic kinship  among the ladies made this ‘Koffee With Karam’ a yum-yum.

But the month of July belonged to Kohraa on Netflix. Although the spoken language of the  series was Punjabi, we didn’t have to  read  the subtitles to follow  what the characters were  thinking. Language is the  least important component  of cinema. Director Randeep Jha  understands this. Kohraa was  resonant with a haunting raga of guilt and retribution. Even the  most minor  of  character left a lasting  impact. But the star discovery  of the series of was the leading man Suvinder Vicky as  a  cop wrestling with his past. When  was the last time we saw an Indian actor give such a rousing performance?

Kohraa  will be discussed for years to come; so would Amazon’s big-ticket  feature Bawaal, though  perhaps not for  the same reasons. True  to its title Bawaal created a furore over its strange  parallel between a fractured marriage and Auschwitz. That  apart, Bawaal had its merits: originality, sincerity and its heart beating at  the right  place.

This is  more than we  can say about Disney-Hotstar’s The  Trial. The architects of this vapid courtroom  drama should be put on trial for squandering Kajol’s talent.