Amitabh Bachchan as Yudhistir Sikarwar in Yudh

Damp squib: (British, noun): A situation or event which is much less impressive than expected

Antonym: A raging firecracker: an event that overwhelms by surpassing expectations

Synonym: Yudh

Monday night was Yudh night. The night when Amitabh Bachchan made his debut in the fiction space on the Indian small screen. The man who isn’t just the biggest movie star India has ever seen but the one who revolutionised Indian television 14 years ago when the baritone boomed through living rooms across the country: “Namaskar main hoon Amitabh Bachchan aur aapka swagat hai Kaun Banega Crorepati mein.”

So when the 71-year-old star who has been-there-done-that many, many times over announced that he would be teaming up with young gun Anurag Kashyap for a finite fiction series called Yudh, expectations skyrocketed. Would Bachchan be able to pull off a Kevin Spacey in House of Cards? Closer home, would he be able to emulate Anil Kapoor’s 24 success? Expectations grew as the list of names attached to Yudh swelled: Sarika to Kay Kay Menon, Nawazuddin Siddiqui to Tigmanshu Dhulia, Shoojit Sircar to Ribhu Dasgupta.

On Monday, I, like so many others, tuned in to Sony at 10.30pm to catch the premiere episode of the biggest show to hit Indian TV in a long time. An hour later, I sat back, underwhelmed. Despite the presence of Amitabh Bachchan and some stunningly shot set pieces.

A t2 report card on what works and what doesn’t...

WHAT WORKS
B for Bachchan

The sole reason for most tuning into Yudh, Bachchan plays Yudhistir Sikarwar, aka Yudh, a construction magnate who sees his world — professional and personal — crumbling before his eyes. Yudh also seems to be seriously unwell, a fact that’s established by loud wheezing bouts and a left arm that seems to die on him often and needs to be revived with adrenaline injections.

Mentally, he’s far worse — even as he goes about his daily life, Yudh has hallucinatory spells, often spotting a dwarf clown running past him (yes, you read that right). Yudh has multiple enemies, a fractured family set-up and innumerable skeletons in his closet.

Bachchan sails through the first episode playing panicky father and harassed husband, tough businessman to scheming boss, holding your attention, even if the episode doesn’t.

The premise

To be honest, Yudh — in its story of a man caught on the backfoot in life — doesn’t throw up anything new in plot. But the premise of a man fighting back after being forced into a corner does have the potential to develop into some delicious twists and turns. Will Yudh the show slowly move into Breaking Bad territory, showing Yudh the man become a totally black character, not even stopping at murder for the sake of family? Let’s wait and watch.

The players

Yudh boasts some good casting. Ram Gopal Varma favourite Zakir Hussain is chillingly ambiguous as Yudh’s college friend and confidant Anand Upadhyay and Kay Kay Menon, with a neck brace, is aptly sinister as a tough cop, but the pick of the lot is Tigmanshu Dhulia’s corrupt politician who steals the thunder from the rest of the cast (yes, even Bachchan!) in his five-minutes screen time.

WHAT DOESN’T

The pace

For a thriller, Yudh has an unforgivably slow pace. The first half hour of the first episode moved on languidly, establishing the motive and modus operandi of Yudh and his side players, but at the end of it, we were just as clueless as we were at the beginning. While some of the set pieces are shot stylishly, Yudh plays out in largely sepia tones, which, somehow, doesn’t make much of an impact.

The plot twists and turns

In its attempt to make the show international in look and feel, Yudh makes itself too abstract, throwing up ridiculous plot points in the process. A flyover is about to crumble, but a hospital does instead; Yudh’s estranged brother-in-law walks out of jail and promptly walks into a gangster’s den which is simply called “Hotel” and the clown in Yudh’s head and mind runs helter-skelter through the length and breadth of your TV screen. The result? Just too much vagueness.

The one image that endured at the end of an hour: Bachchan, sweating profusely in a grey suit, running to evacuate a building about to collapse, putting his heart and soul into that one scene even after all these years in the business. He is the reason we would give Yudh a few chances more, a few episodes more.

PS: How many of you stayed on Sony for five minutes after Yudh to spot Sunny Deol in a CID episode? Now that one was pure gold.

Priyanka Roy

I will/will not watch the rest of Yudh because....

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