Director: Robbie Grewal
Writers: Saurav Dey, Ritu Shri
Cast: Tamannah Bhatia, Shivin Narang, Abhishek Banerjee
Halfway into Aakhri Sach, the show has established a pattern: Every episode must have one entirely ridiculous scene, possibly to stir us out of the ennui of seeing Tamannah Bhatia furrow her brow and speak in gruff tones to denote she’s a serious lady cop.
In the first episode, Crime Branch officer Anya (Bhatia) is introduced to the audience through a scene in which she’s working undercover — which, apparently, is an excuse to put Bhatia in a nightclub, wearing a skintight dress, so that she can honeytrap a man who is so bedazzled by the sight of her that he doesn’t notice she’s nicked his smart watch off his person. It’s almost as though Aakhri Sach doesn’t trust its audience to recognise Bhatia when she’s in regular clothes. The scene also serves to establish that despite being based on real incidents, the show is not interested in realism.
In the second episode, a flashback takes us to a deserted desert landscape. (Like the Prime Video series Dahad, Aakhri Sach imagines rural Rajasthan as vast emptiness, without any humans in sight.) Two men and a horse are walking the unpeopled road. One of the men is Bhuvan (Abhishek Banerjee), the other is his father. After some chit-chat, Bhuvan asks his father to ride the horse. When his father gets on the horse, Bhuvan — who has previously professed to know a thing or two about horses — positions himself behind the animal and gives the horse a mighty kick on its bum. It’s a moment that feels like an ode to golden acts of British physical comedy, like Monty Python or Blackadder. Only the father falls to his death, which is when you realise this was supposed to be a tragic moment.
Fortunately, there’s no such ambiguity about the absurd moment in the third episode, which is without doubt intended to be comedic. While chasing down an elusive self-styled godman, Anya and Delhi’s Crime Branch burst into a secret room in the godman’s mansion. Festooned with curtains and resplendent in red light as though it’s a brothel, the room has a royal-looking couch with gilt detailing. The camera, channelling the police officers’ perspective, enters the room, looking for the godman. Looking past the couch, the camera turns to find the room’s occupant: A goat. The “Meh” it bleats could well be the TLDR version of this review.