Shodha Series Review:

Most thrillers chase blood on the floor; Shodha finds its tension in a chair, a table, and a man who treats the interrogation room as both a battlefield and a stage. What begins as a simple report of a missing wife, gradually transforms into a puzzle of half-truths, shifting identities, and buried secrets. The central question seems straightforward: Where is Meera? Yet every time the police close in on an answer, her husband Rohit (Pawan Kumar) turns the case inside out, converting interrogation into performance.

Cast: Pawan Kumar Siri Ravikumar, Arun Sagar, Anusha Ranganath, Diya Hegde, Ravi Hunsur, Saptami Gowda, and Shwetha Prasad

Director: Sunil Mysore

Streaming on: Zee 5

The hook in this six-episode series is deceptively ordinary. On Meera’s birthday, a cake waits on the table, but she is nowhere to be found. From that absence, the show builds a mystery through contradictory testimonies, altered wedding albums, and whispers of surrogacy. At the centre sits Rohit — a lawyer accused of his wife’s disappearance, but also a man sharp enough to defend himself with every word. He is never only a grieving husband, nor merely a calculating manipulator. Instead, he shifts between roles, sometimes within the same scene. His slipperiness keeps the officers — and us — constantly unsettled. Siri Ravikumar’s sharp presence only heightens this uncertainty, adding fresh layers of doubt to an already fractured reality.

While Rohit drives the narrative, Shodha draws strength from its ensemble. Arun Sagar lends measured gravitas as the inspector, a man trained to slice through fog but repeatedly snared in Rohit’s wordplay. His investigation is less about chasing evidence and more about engaging in a duel of wits. Siri Ravikumar crackles with energy, the fire to the inspector’s calm, her persistence ensuring the case never drifts into monotony. Anusha Ranganath, as Rohit’s sister-in-law, brings a simmering unease that tightens the noose of suspicion and lends emotional heft. Even Shwetha Prasad, in her brief appearance, registers like an afterimage.

Diya Hegde as Tara, Rohit’s daughter, adds another texture altogether. Her innocence stands in stark contrast to the adult world of deception. In one striking sequence, her school play about a Kodava warrior, intercut with glimpses of Saptami Gowda, functions as a haunting mirror to the larger conflict. Through Tara’s perspective, we are reminded that lies don’t just corrode marriages, but they bleed into childhoods, staining innocence with suspicion.

Director Sunil Mysuru, working with Suhas Navarathna’s screenplay, and script-doctoring by Pawan Kumar himself, paces the mystery with a steady hand. The story is structured like a relay of suspicion, with the spotlight shifting from Rohit to Meera, to the daughter, to the sister-in-law, and inevitably back to the police. Rain-slicked streets and shadowed corners of the town amplify the tension, as if the place itself were conspiring to conceal the truth.

But Shodha shines brightest inside the interrogation chamber. The police station becomes less a workplace and more a courtroom. Every word is weaponised, every pause deliberate, every shrug a counter-argument. Rohit’s legal acrobatics force officers to abandon procedure and engage in psychological warfare. These exchanges blur the line between confession and performance, law and justice, truth and illusion.

The narrative isn’t without blemishes. The diversion into identity games occasionally dilutes the intensity. Some twists, though clever, verge on predictability, and the bond between Rohit and Meera could have carried more emotional weight. At times, Shodha feels more invested in trickery than in exposing the fragile humanity beneath.

Yet the series lingers because it probes questions beyond guilt. Can a man be a terrible husband but still a devoted father? Is closure genuine, or just another illusion staged for peace of mind? Is justice itself a performance, and a story stitched together for order rather than truth? Shodha refuses neat answers, but it ensures the journey stays gripping.

With Pawan Kumar’s unpredictable turn at its core, grounded support from Arun Sagar and Siri Ravikumar, Anusha Ranganath’s simmering presence, the spectral shadow of Shwetha Prasad’s Meera, Saptami Gowda’s striking interludes, and young Diya Hegde bridging the emotional thread, Shodha transforms a missing-person case into a theatre of memory, law, and manipulation. At its best, it doesn’t just narrate a crime — it conducts a trial before our eyes.

Shodha is now streaming on Zee5.