PariWar

If you just go to the wiki or IMDB page of the series PariWar and check the cast of the new Hotstar show, you won’t be able to resist yourself from watching the show. It has Gajraj Rao, Ranvir Shorey, Vijay Raaz, Yashpal Sharma, Abhishek Banerjee, etc in major roles, and almost every member in the cast is known for their performances rather than being a stereotypical good looking star. But the writing of this show directed by Bheja Fry director Sagar Ballary is extremely lackluster and it just can’t create any sort of excitement to make you look forward to the next episode.

Kashiram Narayan is a wealthy widower from Allahabad who is now in his old age living alone in his big house. His kids aren’t really in touch with him and they never make an effort to pay him a visit as the boys in the family Shashipal and Mahipal hated each other. So Kashiram Ji pulled a trick and made all of them visit him, including his daughter who is now in the US, by saying that his health was in a bad shape. The events that happened in that family after the arrival of the siblings are the core of this web series.

When it is a series, you are going into each episode hoping to see something compelling happening in the story so that you will be hooked on to it. But here there is no such thing. It takes awfully long for the series to even show what really the conflict is. I kind of knew the purpose of the character played by Vijay Raaz’s Gangaram in the series the moment he entered the frame and what was weird was that the writers are assuming it to be a surprise. And the writing is getting stuck on largely pointless elements in the story in search jokes that are required since the tone of the series is humorous.

Coming to the performances, there isn’t a bad performance here. It’s just that nobody in the cast deserved to be misused like this. These are actors who played wonderful characters in shows and movies that had a soul and seeing them in a lifeless series that relies heavily on their contribution disappointed me. Gajraj Rao is the patriarch Kashiram here who is trying to put an end to the feud between his sons. Yashpal Sharma as Mahipal was fine while Ranvir Shorey’s Shishupal was slightly over the top. Vijay Raaz gets a role that yet again uses the successful tricks in his kitty. Anurita Jha and Sadiya Siddiqui managed to keep things real. The only bit of the performance that really sort of worked for me was that of Nidhi Singh and Abhishek Banerjee as they both shared warm and sensible chemistry on screen.

The writing by Gaganjeet Singh and Shantanu Anam is the major problem here. Rather than developing layers to give strength to a basic plot, they are trying to look for humor by creating subplots that aren’t really contributing to the main plot. It’s our good luck that some of the pointless subplots had that likable feel largely due to the performances. Looking at the way the series has presented Gangaram, some of the things he had done to manipulate the brothers don’t make any sense other than the creators thinking “we have to create some funny stuff to utilize Vijay Raaz”. Counter dialogues of characters that somewhere feels like it was improvised on the spot are the only thing that is making this series bearable.

The average duration of the episodes of this 6 episode series is just around 20 minutes. The pointless stretching of the series starts to become evident by the time you finish the second episode. And then it is that tiring wait to see the end which is far too preachy and we used to see such stuff in the cheesy ‘90s family dramas. PariWar is a tasteless comedy that failed to use its quality actors.

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