Fourteen years ago, Saqib Saleem and Saba Azad debuted with Y-Films’ (which was a subsidiary company of Yashraj, mainly for promoting youth-oriented content) Mujhse Fraaandship Karoge (yeah, back then funky spelling was the in thing). I’m sure neither the actors nor the fans of that film, including yours truly, ever imagined seeing these two actors together in something like Zee 5’s Crime Beat, all these years later. I don’t have to tell you that the latest show is drastically different from Saleem and Azad’s debut film in every aspect. It is still a nice, perhaps unplanned, reunion. But if I have to point out the things that actively hurt Crime Beat, then the romance between Saleem and Azad’s characters should be at the top of the list. There is a professional rivalry angle at play as well, which works out.
Crime Beat, of course, is an eight-episode adaptation of author Somnath Batabyal’s 2013 novel, The Price You Pay. I got curious about the source material after getting this assignment, so I ended up reading the free twenty-seven pages of it. Based on that, I can say the adaptation is quite faithful, but that’s as much as I’m going to say about this whole book versus movie debate. The show does stand on its own merit anyway. It’s engaging from the get go and manages to hold you till the very end. It doesn’t really drag in the middle. Most episodes clock in at under half an hour, keeping things brief; smart writing and crisp editing ensure that the pace never suffers. With writer Sanjeev Kaul and director Sudhir Mishra at the helm of it, Crime Beat comes with a steady amount of expectation. Kaul’s name may be unfamiliar to some of you, but Mishra is a popular name. The sixty-six-year-old, three-time national film award-winning veteran director is known for his mastery in presenting socially relevant dramatic stories like Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2003) and Chameli (2003), to name a few. Crime Beat being a political thriller, this is a different ball game for Mishra, but from what I saw, the man has handled the ship remarkably well.
So what’s the show about? Well, at the center of it, we have this fugitive—Binny Chaudhary, who has wronged the Delhi government. Following the very popular Indian web series template—where a show begins with a super dramatic action sequence before going back in time and bringing us (the audience) back to the starting point—Crime Beat drops us right into the middle of that climactic point, where Binny is about to surrender. Obviously things don’t go as per plan, and the story now takes us back, and we tag along with rookie crime journalist Abhishek Sinha (Saleem)—not sure why the name is changed from Abhishek Dutta. Binny is our focal point while Abhishek is the de facto hero of our story. However, the show excels at creating many moral conflicts, and it doesn’t exactly allow you to root for Abhishek or any other character in particular. There’s a lot of shades of grey here, and no characters—barring a few completely corrupted ones—are absolute black or white. That’s also what makes the drama in the show very palpable.
None of this would have been possible without strong performances by the cast. Saleem’s Abhishek has strange similarities with his own career. Like what Abhishek has to do in the show, Saleem has been grinding for a long time in order to establish himself as a leading man. The good thing about the OTT wave in India is that so many actors like him are getting opportunities to showcase their talent. He is not the best thing about Crime Beat, though. That award goes to Rahul Bhat, who plays the infamous Binny Chaudhary. Of course, the character is colorful enough to be the biggest deal here, and Bhat has brought so much charisma into it. Oddly enough, my earliest memory of seeing the actor happens to be in the unbelievably goofy Nayee Padosan (2003), a bad film that I used to love back in those days. The actor eventually made it big with Anurag Kashyap’s masterpiece Ugly (2014) and then a few other Kashyap projects. With Vikram Motwani’s Black Warrant, where he plays a pivotal part, and now Crime Beat, the stars are shining pretty bright for the actor at the moment. Along with Saleem and Bhat, the two other strongest performers of the show are Danish Hussain—who you might have seen in Peepli Live (2010) and Bard of Blood (2019)—and Rajesh Tailang, who has been in the crème de la crème of Indian web series, from Mirzapur to Delhi Crime to Trial By Fire. Hussain plays news editor Aamir Akhtar, a man who seems like someone who knows what he’s doing, but that might not be the case. Tailang’s DCP Uday is possibly the most well-written part here, and the actor has done a fantastic job. Kishore Kadam, whom I remember from Fandry (2014)—one of the greatest Indian films of the modern era—has limited screen time as photo editor Pashupati, but that’s more than enough for an actor of his caliber to make an impact. Sadly, I am unable to say anything good about Azad’s Maya. She is the weak link here, although the character gains some relevance narrative-wise during the climax.
One thing that really bugged me about Crime Beat is the show’s uncertainty about what it wants to be. There are times it feels like you’re watching a prestige drama with all the grit and intensity, and then you have Saleem and Azad’s characters jumping into an erotic romp during an extremely volatile moment. I’m not saying such things don’t happen, but it just doesn’t fit in this show. With someone like Sudhir Mishra captaining the ship, the show stays away from fully embracing the pulpiness, but it also doesn’t quite go the full Delhi Crime way. That’s the pinnacle of Indian crime shows, by the way, to me at least. So in conclusion, the marriage between pulp and prestige in Crime Beat appears dysfunctional, but thanks to the making and acting, the show still works for us.
