I have been trying hard to conjure up some excitement about the series ‘Bad Cop’, but I just can’t.
On the surface, the show has everything going for it. It stars Gulshan Devaiah and Anurag Kashyap as the three leads. I say three because Gulshan Devaiah is cast in a double role. He is Karan and he is Arjun — two identical twin orphans who are separated early in life by fate and their behaviour. One grows up to become a cop, the other a small-time crook.
Devaiah is an excellent actor who does a lot, seemingly with very little effort. And Kashyap is cast in his dream role here. In ‘Bad Cop’’s testosterone-dripping world, he plays an underworld don who gets to shout a string of abuses in every scene, brandish a gun, humiliate people and generally be a menacing presence in the lives of all.
The series has high production value, lots of slick action sequences, a great background score, two decent female characters and some cool one-liners by dialogue-writer Hussain Dalal. But everything about ‘Bad Cop'’s story is so filmy and predictable that, despite all the swag with which its characters arrive and the excitement that the music tries to inject intoscenes, a stale stench lingers throughout.
Every character feels like a familiar entity who has walked over from some other series or film to do what they were doing there. Every twist in the plot is predictable, as is the outcome.Leaving us with, in the end, a series that has great acting, promises a lot, but delivers the bare, dull minimum.
‘Bad Cop’ opens in Pune where we meet Karan and Arjun. One is married to a cop, Devika (Harleen Sethi), while the other is having an affair with a con artist, Kiki (Aishwarya Sushmita). One is chasing the bad guys, and the other, while blackmailing a debauched, bald man, witnesses a murder.
Soon, one is dead and the other is out for revenge.
The series keeps cutting to a flashback to fill us in on the tragedy that befell the twins, how they got separated and why they took different paths.
In the present, between Karan/Arjun’s life, death and revenge lie two significant roadblocks: No. 1 is Kasbe (Anurag Kashyap), an underworld don in sleeveless shirts who operates out of a jail and through his incompetent nephew; No. 2 is CBI inspector Aarif Khan (Saurabh Sachdeva).
Aarif is chasing the killer of his journalist friend, and Kasbe is trying to get his illegal consignment out.
Woven into all this are mini stories about the illegal and brutal ivory trade, a marriage that is dying, and jails that are really just grimy fiefdoms of dons.
All of these strands get the same treatment as the main plot, i.e. lots of slickness but bereft of a single original thought or scene.
Despite the fact that the series’ premise and plot are so desi-filmy, ‘Bad Cop’ is based on a 2017 German series (also titled Bad Cop).
A lot happens in the series' 30-minute episodes. Bikes do cartwheels in the air,there are intense car chases and bullets go thain-thain. The series’ screenplay, in fact, is loaded with action, characters, twists, but none of it is exciting because the characters feel trite and the story holds no surprises, at least not till Episode 6.
It'surprising that the series’ writers — a team led by Renzil D’Silva — couldn’t come up with anything intelligent or exciting., given that D’Silva wrote the screenplay for ‘Rang De Basanti’ (2006), ‘Student of the Year’ (2012) and the series ‘24’.
‘Bad Cop'’s story and screenplay are so weak and unintelligent that in a crucial scene, where one twin decides to take on the identity of the other, another character notices all the changes and red flags, but is made to mouth justifications for each one, apropos nothing.
Aditya Datt, who has directed forgettable films like ‘Aashiq Banaya Aapne’ (2005) and Vidyut Jamwal’s ‘Crakk’ (2024) in the past, does a fine job here despite the threadbare script. Datt, with the help of talented actors, smart cinematography and editing, is able to create interesting characters and infuse some tension in the plot. But without a strong script, there’s a limit to how much actors and a director can do.
Despite that Devaiah and Anurag Kashyap are in good form here and keep the series going. Kashyap especially seems to be having a great time playing Kasbe, and keeps us hooked.
Even Saurabh Sachdeva, who has many scenes and a powerful screen presence, but not much to do except shout at his juniors in exasperation, is able to hold our attention.
Harleen Sethi, who plays the angry cop-wife, is quite good, but like all characters, she too is single-note. As is Aishwarya Sushmita’s Kiki.Both these actresses could have added some sparkle, but the script lets them and us down.
Bad Cop (Series)
Direction: Aditya Datt
Cast:Gulshan Devaiah, Anurag Kashyap, Harleen Sethi, Saurabh Sachdeva, Deepak Kamboj, Aishwarya Sushmita
Rating: **
Bad Cop will stream on Disney+Hotstar in weekly instalments. This review is based on the first six episodes. The last two episodes are not yet complete.
