Scam 1992 - An appreciation post
Since most people would already have watched this one, this isn’t a review or recommendation as much as it is an appreciation post:
If I were to try and articulate the feeling I have when I watch an Indian show, it is generally one of predictability. Where by and large I know what is going to happen, yet end up watching through it. Alternatively, I feel the makers are trying to catch hold of and shake me up to get my interest, to hold my attention. #Scam1992 does neither, I didn’t know what is going to happen yet they didn’t feel the need to shake me up. They respected my intelligence and took me along for the ride. A ride, in a Lexus, alongside a fascinating man, a financial criminal - Harshad Mehta.
The slow unravelling of an intricate web of financial deceit is delicious to watch. Harshad Mehta wasn’t your everyday criminal. He was once described by Pritish Nandy as one of the most patriotic Indians ever! He truly wanted to put India on the global map through the share market. But his methods were cunning and eventually the whimsical courage that built him a personality cult, also became responsible for bringing him down.
Omerta, Shahid, Aligarh, perhaps only the unofficial King of Indian biopics - Hansal Mehta - could’ve done justice to this story. Under his stewardship, the show achieves a certain maturity that only his sensibilities could have brought in.
The research put in by Writers Saurav Dey and Sumit Purohit is evident! Being tasked with turning a web of technical, financial crimes into something everyone can remain engaged with, without ever going over the top, must have been a massive challenge but they aced it!
The 15-years-overnight-success Pratik Gandhi IS Harshad Mehta, it is as if he was born to play this role. Each movement, each mannerism, each pronunciation, the weight he gained, the Gujarati nuances, ‘woh jis tarah Harshad ke rang mein nahaa gaya hain’, everything feels just meant to be. This is his first great performance. A few more and he can join the league of Nawaz and Rajkummar for he has the talent and now it will be down to his choices.
The dialogues by Karan Vyas and Vaibhav Vaishal are a character in themselves. Harshad gets a lot of mic-drop lines without there ever being a hero’s reception for them! The show never endorses Mehta, it just shows who he was and both dialogue writers have caught his pulse perfectly! Hansal Mehta said that their first dialogue draft almost became their shooting draft and that is no mean feat!
1994 born Pratham Mehta wasn’t alive when the scam happened but his cinematography makes it appear as if he was. With truly global-grade work in his first major project, he is sure to make waves in the future!
Editors Kunal Walve and Sumit Purohit had the unenviable task of editing mammoth amounts of footage into an intense and coherent final cut, moreover they had to do most of it during the Covid lockdown. One can only imagine the number of Google sheets and collaboration tools they must have had to add to the already unforgivingly tedious task of editing. Given the fact that he also co-wrote the screenplay, Sumit would have had the miserable task of switching between both caps constantly, which is easier said than done.
Achint Thakkar's hauntingly mysterious, yet peppy title song has attained a hero’s popularity in itself! You can’t stop headbanging to it, which also makes this show’s title sequence one of the very few you won’t necessarily skip each episode.
Mukesh Chhabra's casting is the stuff of dreams. Several actors can do a role but getting actors who give their own spin to a character, who surprise you, who blur the lines between the character and the actor, that is quite an achievement. In a time when surprisingly good new actors are being discovered every day, Chhabra has casted old, great actors who’ve so far been known for not-so-great roles. Ananth Narayan Mahadevan as RBI Governor Venkitaramanan is unrecognizably poised. Satish Kaushik as the formidable Manu Mundra is a hoot but also sufficiently intimidating when needed. Shreya Dhanwanthary and Faisal Rashid are exceedingly sincere and irritatingly perseverant as Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu, whose journalism and book the show is based on. Rajat Kapoor is expectedly brilliant in his short role as CBI Special Officer Madhavan. Hemant Kher and Anjali Barot who play Harshad’s brother and wife respectively, build an endearing blanket around him thus making you empathise for how his family would’ve felt. Chirag Modi and Jay Upadhyay are efficient!
Major kudos to Ritesh Modi and the Sony LIV Team as well as Sameer Nair and Team Applause Entertainment for caring enough, for being bold enough, to look for new and deep content and backing it with a seriously good team and resources.
No show is perfect, it is a matter of perspectives and I felt perhaps the show could have been an episode or two shorter, for not much moves after Harshad is being pinned into a corner. I also felt that the scenes involving Ajay Kedia and Tyagi (played by the Actor turned Producer turned Actor Nikhil Dwivedi) were a tad repetitive. But that is just me nitpicking in an otherwise excellent show, the first of its kind for India!
I firmly believe that with the advent of OTTs and access to filmmaking being greater than ever, India is now going to witness its best decade of films and shows and the impressive ‘Scam 1992’ gives newer screenwriters and filmmakers like myself so much hope and belief to partake in this phenomenon!