It becomes clear in the second episode of Daldal, the latest police procedural starring Bhumi Pednekar, that the show is not going after nail-biting suspense or mystery riding on a ‘whodunit’ plot. However, it is truly in the following episode when we finally make peace with the series’ intentions. After starting off as a show about a cop unraveling a series of killings, the episode takes almost a complete detour, going deeper into characters, focusing more on their origins rather than the unsettling events they find themselves becoming a part of.

Cast: Bhumi Pednekar, Samara Tijori, Aditya Rawal, Geeta Agrawal Sharma, Chinmay Mandlekar

Created by: Suresh Triveni

Directed by: Amrit Raj Gupta

Streaming on: Prime Video

This strong-headed desire to defy conventions while playing within similar confines is what remains the strength and weakness of Daldal. There is little titillation, and more emotional probing and exploration instead. The series, created by Suresh Triveni and directed by Amrit Raj Gupta, runs along with this brief. Curious in its journey of figuring out the root of these messy personal stories that find a violent outlet in the city underbelly. The show is also relentlessly morbid and disturbing in its revelations, and doesn’t pull back on the throttle at any point. 

There are many familiar tropes at work, no doubt — a tortured cop, an insomniac, crime-riddled city, a misogynist system pretending to champion the underdogs. There is also a jovial supportive cop-figure who might or might not live to see the finale. Daldal turns the tables on us by going inwards, by focusing on a moody narrative style rather than chasing pace or plot-driven proceedings — despite largely playing on the will-they-be-caught-or-won’t-they premise. There is a seamless flow to the way scenes are written and executed, a quality possibly achieved because of the writers’ conscious effort to not play by the beat. 

Even though the show occasionally loses focus and struggles to tie in all its loose ends (the choppy subplot with Jatin and Anita, for instance) — the writers also keep enough cards close to their chest (including a touching cameo by Rahul Bhatt) to keep us emotionally invested through its entire run. Which is why it doesn’t bother us that the show takes its sweet time to full-fledgedly return to the cat-and-mouse dynamics, a cross all cop-dramas must eventually bear. And then there are eerie touches like the one with a late-night radio show — and a dreamy romantic song — that gets a dark twist as we see it become a silent witness to the true brutality that unfolds at night in a city like Mumbai. 

There is also a subtle weaving in of the socio-political dynamics that gives the show its edge. At its core, this is also a story of the angst of the oppressed underdogs who are forced to lie on the outskirts of a society. 

Like any good series, Daldal also spends a lot of time exploring the grey, blurring the lines between the prey and the predator, the law-abiders and the law-breakers. What binds their stories, in a strange, satisfying manner, is the similarity of their emotional baggage that they have been carrying since years. The search for an accepting mother runs as an undercurrent throughout the show. It’s both Samara Tijori and Aditya Rawal who do the heavylifting here, bringing a haunting intensity to their roles. Samara, in particular, lives up to the task of playing a young woman who has only been fighting battles since her early years, and has gradually internalised it to a point of self-sabotage.

Meanwhile, DCP Rita Ferreira (Bhumi Pednekar) comes not just with her own traumas, but also a sense of flawed morality that almost puts her on the same moral ground as the antagonists. There is a very thin line that divides the two. Both of them hide in plain sight. What ties them is a sense of abandonment that has kept them emotionally distant from the world around them. This ability of the writers to not elevate Rita to a heroic stature despite all the temptations is what also makes Daldal work. Rita is allowed to to remain a protagonist, without carrying the burden of being the moral centre of her universe. Bhumi Pednekar also embodies the script’s desire to keep Rita as an observer. There are no histrionics involved here; just a studied internalisation of a character struggling to move on from her past. 

Rita’s trauma, encapsulated in her guilt-ridden conversations with her mother, might feel repetitive to some. One could even argue that these segments do not add much to the plot. What they do, however, is give a more complex layering to Rita's character - and Daldal is nothing if not a character-driven show instead of a plot-driven one. Choices like the continuous exploration of Rita's traumas from the past ensure viewers that the story is in right hands.