Writing drawbacks compensated with great performances

Kafas

Hindi (SonyLiv)

Director: Sahil Sangha

Cast: Sharman Joshi, Mona Singh, Vivan Bhathena

Rating: 3/5

Kafas (cage) is not an easy word on the tongue. Neither is the SonyLiv series by this name, an undemanding watch. The six-episode drama sits edgily at the corners of your mind and mildly (though one wishes more forcefully) makes you ask yourself: What would you have done in the same situation?

The real cage here is genteel poverty, which the Vashisht family is desperate to break out of. Raghav, played by Sharman Joshi who has almost been typecast now as the about-to-accept-defeat aam aadmi, is a struggling manager in a single-screen vintage theatre in Mumbai. His pretty and ambitious wife Seema (Mona Singh) works as a beautician at a salon run by the stereotypical stingy 'Madame'. Their teenage son Sunny (Mikail Gandhi) and daughter Shreya (Tejasvi Singh Ahlawat) both dream big too and want to become actors. The family is thrilled when Sunny gets chosen to play the son of Bollywood superstar Vikram Bajaj (Vivan Bhathena) in his next movie and begins to imagine their future as a bed of roses. Alas, thorns peer out pretty quickly and soon the Vashisht family is forced to face themselves in a mirror darkened by immorality, greed, and cowardice. Caught in a storm of power, privilege and influence, the family finds itself rudderless and the rest of the tale is about whether they manage to hang on to each other and reach safer shores.

An official adaptation of BBC's 'Dark Money', 'Kafas' explores the dynamics of the parent-teen relationship with empathy and sensitivity but the pace slackens badly by episode 5, enough to make one chafe with impatience. The snags in the screenplay are more than compensated by the solid performances by all actors, the kids especially. The surprise package is Preeti Jhangiani (yes, the same) who plays the disdainful, ever-bored trophy wife to near-perfection. Give her meatier roles, I say!