Preaching and Reaching
When two characters chat in a moving car against a green-screen background, it looks fake, yet the series insists on staging the most crucial scenes inside cars (including a confession). LGBTQ+ protests happen outside police stations, but their chants (“We want justice!”) are so poorly dubbed and mixed that they sound like morning prayers in a classroom. Firdaus’s defining moment comes when she defies her superior, crosses the barricade to join the protestors and waves the pride flag. The scene is undone by its craft: The crowd goes pin-drop silent when she tells off her boss, almost as if the chanting has an off switch. These are tiny details, but they add up to dismantle our investment in the journey. The last episode – where the killer is revealed – is almost incoherent. Information and entire scenes seem to be missing, and the twist itself lacks conviction. If revenge was the only motive, why would the killer behave like they’re a stylish serial killer leaving clues on bodies for the police? It makes no sense.
For a show that bats against bigotry and homophobia, its own approach is steeped in caricature. Muslim characters are seen eating biryani, and yelling “Hai allah!” and “Janaab” when a cop intimidates them. The Gujarati twang of a character called Mrs. Desai is limited to her English words only; khakhra is the only snack on her dining table. A gay screenwriter named Leslie is the most flamboyant cliche (“Oi Peter-boy!”), a 1990s sidekick stuck in a 2024 multiverse. And for a show that has the name of a place in its title, its sense of place is strangely superficial. I like that a lot of it is filmed on location – the railway stations, Dadar chowpatty, the inner lanes and footpaths – but it never becomes author Jerry Pinto’s Mahim. The area never becomes a character; it rarely informs our reading of the people scrambling within. None of the houses look lived-in either. Peter’s old-school bungalow looks like an IKEA section called ‘Catholic Coolth’. Shiva’s flat is ‘Honest Cop Home’. Even a seafront bar looks designed as ‘Koliwada Living’.
There are two ways to process the performances. The optimistic way is: Two decades ago, who would have imagined a mainstream series being led by pigeonholed Bollywood veterans like Vijay Raaz and Ashutosh Rana? Its existence is a miracle. But the practical way is: A cast that features Raaz, Rana, Smita Tambe (as Shiva’s wife), Divya Jagdale and Shivaji Satam deserves a better show. The actors are flattened by the film-making – apart from the odd spark in Shiva’s arguments with his dad (the father-son angle gets resolved too easily), or when he stands up for Firdaus with Vijay-Raaz-esque swag. To call it a lost opportunity is an understatement. To call it a cinematic crime would be an exaggeration. Murder in Mahim is not unwatchable, but it fumbles the fundamentals of its genre. It mistakes slow-burning for slow. If it were an Indian batsman, it would be criticized for its strike-rate – in Test cricket no less.