‘The Railway Men’: Gas tragedy drama falls short

Indian OTT series have a tendency to follow a pattern, a formulaic one at that. In the first half of the year, there was a flurry of police procedurals — some good (Kohrra, Dahaad and Kaalkoot spring to the mind) and many others average to rank bad, which, deservingly perhaps, got lost in the melee. Now, as we near the end of the year, it is real-life-inspired disaster stories that are having a moment. First, it was Kaala Pani, a dark take-off on a Covid-like situation, and then two weeks ago, The Railway Men (Netflix) arrived from the Yash Raj stable, no less.

You don’t exactly expect a Yash Raj Films’ debut web series to be on what is perhaps one of the darkest chapters in Indian history — the Bhopal gas tragedy and the sheer disregard and callousness for human life that caused it. But Aditya Chopra is not the sort to sit out a trend, is he?

For context, on the night of December 2-3, 1984, unsuspecting residents of Bhopal, many in their sleep, were choked to their deaths and several thousand were maimed for life because of a deadly gas leak from a pesticide plant. Official figures say around 4,000 died. Unofficially, the count goes up to 15,000 (which is the number the series quotes, without citing any source).

This is not your sweeping saga of a disaster the nation has nearly forgotten about. Instead, the four-part series confines itself to the tale of a few good men (and a woman), who “did their duty” and did it courageously, braving it all — from the frustrating red tape to unprovoked apathy and, of course, the possibility of their own deaths. The series begins with Union Carbide predictably acting all slimy and suspicious. Warnings are blatantly ignored, safety assessments are gathering dust in fat files and supervisor Kamruddin’s (Dibyendu Bhattacharya in a striking cameo) warnings go unheeded. It is clear the producers wanted to make a high-pitched emotional drama and they are successful to a certain extent. However, this too falls prey to the typical Indian OTT disease — a love for excess. Attempts to mix an already meaty story with the anti-Sikh riots that followed Indira Gandhi’s death and top it with sly dollops of political posturing make the narration foggy in places — totally unnecessary one would think in a story about a gas tragedy!

Compare this to the award-winning mini-series Chernobyl (2019) on HBO and it is then you begin to appreciate why ‘The Railway Men’ ultimately fails in its quest to be extraordinary. Chernobyl is polished television. Here, there are no pile-on side trails, and yet, it is a horror story, a political thriller and an emotional drama that tugs at your heart. Remember the deer dead among the trees? The deliberate chaos on the streets? The treacly claustrophobia in the darkened homes? Here is pure, concentrated dread distilled into five tight episodes, relentlessly grim and masterfully tense — as a disaster series ought to be. Alas, you find very little of this in The Railway Men, which tends to slip into predictable sentimentality.

That said, Divyenndu as the train bandit hiding a heart of gold and Babil Khan (Irrfan Khan’s son) playing the angsty new station recruit emerge as true stars. But this is a series headlined by the brilliant Kay Kay Menon who plays the insomniac and terribly brave stationmaster Iftekaar, for whose sake you don’t mind chugging to the end.