When Mirzapur got released, many reviews said that it felt like a wannabe Anurag Kashyap movie that never achieved that quality. Well, I personally never had that opinion about the series. But when it comes to the new Zee5 Alt Balaji series Bicchoo Ka Khel starring Divyendu Sharma in the lead role, I would say it is trying to cash in on the success of Mirzapur in which Divyendu played a significant role. The series has nine episodes that are roughly 20 minutes long. The performances make the series something you can sit through, but it has hardly anything to make you think about anything in the series once you finish watching it.
Akhil is a young man who lives with his father, who worked in a bakery. He was in love with the Bakery owner’s brother’s daughter. He shared a unique and weird bond with his father. But at one point, his father gets framed in the murder of a notorious gangster, and eventually, his father dies in mysterious circumstances. Akhil’s efforts to bring out the truth are what we see in this 9 episode series.
At the beginning of the series, they show us this written statement that this series is their humble homage to Hindi movie music’s golden age. And I thought we will be able to see some quirky usage of classic Hindi music in this yet another UP bloodshed series. It is almost like the makers forgot about this homage while making 90% of the series, and in the last episode, when they remembered about the homage theme, we can see them desperately squeezing in old songs into the treatment. The way these actors speak the UP slang has a level of swagger in them, and if there is something that feels enjoyable in this poorly written crime thriller, it is that swagger element.
Divyendu Sharma is not trying to be Munna Bhaiyya here. Even though his character has these rough edges, he makes Akhil look like a guy who is a bit emotional too. As the feisty girlfriend Rashmi of Akhil, Anshul Chauhan doesn’t get the space to make the character memorable and ends up being one of those typical free-spirited girlfriend characters. Mukul Chadda, as Akhil’s father, was somewhat unique. Gangs of Wasseypur fame Syed Zeeshan Qadri as the inspector was pretty convincing with his dialect and attitude.
The writing of the series is such that it is trying to spoon-feed the audience far too much. We have Akhil explaining the story to us at regular intervals, and it almost felt unnecessary. How they have used the title song as a background score in the series can make you pull your hair. It was almost like they knew the content is lacking some twists and punches. So they decided to bombard it with the hook line of the main song. The screenplay was skipping through events in a hasty manner, and thus the twists in the plot looked underwhelming. The cuts here were too flashy and disorienting.
Listening to Hindi in the UP slang is fun, and that fun element was there in Bicchoo Ka Khel. But when it comes to the content, Bicchoo Ka Khel is just a hurried narrative with a basic plot that aspires to look like a convoluted one. But in reality, it is pretty simplistic. Divyendu Sharma is a talented artist, and I hope creators will give him a variety of characters rather than making him a stereotypical abusive UP boy.
When it comes to the content, Bicchoo Ka Khel is just a hurried narrative with a basic plot that aspires to look like a convoluted one. But in reality, it is pretty simplistic.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
