Towards the end of the new Malayalam Series from ZEE5, Kasaragod Embassy, the character played by actor Deepak Parambol says things like, ‘Even though I thought I was investigating petty forces, I almost encountered an underworld mafia,’ and so on. And when the series ended after that dialogue, I was like, that was your idea of a mafia? Written by Heeraj, the Kasaragod Embassy is like the first draft someone writes in the hangover of seeing some gangster series or movie. By throwing in concepts like syndicate of gangsters and other things, the series wants to feel like a sophisticated take on illegal activities. But what you eventually get is a cheap derivative of all the gangster-based content out there.
The story is narrated from the POV of two young boys, Azi and Chemmu, from Kasaragod. They live with their uncle, who runs this shop that sells duplicate stuff to people. At one point, these two are lured into the world of printing fake passports by a guy named Roy. What we see here is how that easy money shortcut causes problems in the lives of these two.
Sometimes, when we see a particular show that has 8 or 10 episodes, and each episode has a duration of one hour or so, there is a possibility that we might talk like those characters for a brief time, like those funny reels about how people switch accents after watching Bridgerton. Somewhere, I felt the writer of this show was consuming too many English-language series before or while writing this series. Because there are these intelligence wing characters in this series, including Deepak Parambol, and they are always speaking in a kind of English as if they were working in the NYPD till last month. Excerpts of English dialogues are understandable. However, in this case, the lengths to which those conversations go are hilariously bad, and it happens almost every time these characters are shown.
There is a severe lack of creativity as the screenplay tries hard to attain a minimum of twenty minutes duration for each episode, including credits. And to achieve that, they have even added two songs that were conceived in the lamest way possible. The world-building that happens here is generic, and the overall production quality is so bad that it is extremely tough to take these characters seriously. Even a physically towering Kabir Duhan Singh feels less intimidating. The over-the-phone conversation he has with the so-called syndicate would make you wonder whether this is a spoof series. One of the most pretentious things I saw in this series is towards the end, where one of the boys asks the other to escape from this mess. The logic he applies to be the sacrificing one felt like a lame attempt by the show’s writer to appear like an intellectual.
When the writing is bad, you often see underwhelming performances, and the same applies to this series as well. Govind V. Pai and Abu Saalim are trying their best to make these characters feel believable. But in many places, the lines that are given to them are so bad that they themselves seem to be confused about how to render them. Kabir Duhan Singh as Damanna gets this bland gangster character who has a lot of swagger and nothing else. Deepak Parambol, with his signature smirk, is throwing in a lot of unnecessary attitude, and his flawed dialogue delivery makes the whole performance look like a meh. Rony David is there as Roy, and he tries his hand at cracking the Kasaragod slang with this series. Actor Sudheesh plays a caricature-like uncle character.
The sheer nothingness and the creative laziness of this series were enough to give a writer’s block to someone who tries to review it. The lack of faith from OTT platforms isn’t really helping the future of shows in the Malayalam language in the current scenario. While the hits and misses in platforms like JioHotstar and SonyLIV manage to maintain a minimum quality, the shows that have come from ZEE5 have been humilatingly horrible. I hope some sort of intervention happens in the way ZEE5, as a platform, greenlights shows.
