Pharma, the latest series from Jio Hotstar, definitely has good intentions, and it is very evident from the promo materials. When it comes to the series, the writing is extremely flat, and it almost feels like a what-if Shankar was not given the budget to make a social justice movie. Directed by PR Arun, who previously made Rajisha Vijayan starrer Finals and wrote movies like Nellikka and Jamnapyari, Pharma is an extremely peripheral exploration of the pharmaceutical world, and it is struggling to crack the syntax of a series.
The story here is about a man named KP Vinod who is part of a pharmaceutical giant named RX Life Healthcare. After initial struggles to find a good equation with doctors, Vinod eventually becomes a successful employee of the company. What we see in the series are the events that unfold in Vinod’s life when he realizes certain bad practices in the company in the production of drugs.
I think ever since Aamir Khan dropped that episode on Generic medicines in Satyamev Jayate, a good segment of the public was aware of the scam that happens in this industry. And we all know that there is persuasion on doctors from companies to prescribe certain medicines. The problem with Pharma is that it is underestimating the audience way too much. The hero KP Vinod, who is presented as someone with good academic knowledge, acts like Umesh from Oru Vadakkan Selfie in the 2008 portions of this series. The forced humor you see in those bits where Vinod tries to take the lead in a negotiation with a senior doctor just doesn’t work. Looking at the way this series progresses into something serious and big, this decision to stretch bits with humor felt like a bad creative call.
The production of this series was completed long ago in 2024, and it actually had a premiere at the 2024 International Film Festival of India. The structuring of Pharma clearly makes you wonder how the creators here are not thinking about utilizing the format of a series. The writing here is unable to create cliff-hanger endings to episodes, and you can clearly feel that this was pretty much a feature film idea that got dismantled into a series. And there are many areas where the sequences are stretched far too long just to achieve that 20+ minutes duration. There are these stitched single-take shots in this one that just feel gimmicky.
As I said, there are these contrasting tones to the character of KP Vinod. While the funny one felt like a misfit, Nivin’s portrayal of the sulky version of that character was fine. Rajit Kapoor as the rebel doctor who decides to fight against the big names looks perfect for the role, in terms of body language. But the dubbing is evidently out of sync. The two performers, in my view, who were able to present their characters in the most natural way were Binu Pappu and Shruti Ramachandran. While Binu Pappu had relatively less screen time, Shruthi Ramachandran gets to play a very significant character in the series, and the grace and flow one would love to see in such a character were there in her dialogue delivery. Aswathy Manoharan, Veena Nandakumar, Saafboi, Narain, Muthumani, etc., are the other major names in the cast.
Pharma is a series that isn’t taking an effort on a writing level to give something impactful to the audience. Every beat of the story is predictable, and what makes it irritating is that it underestimates the audience’s general knowledge. I really hope OTT platforms take an initiative to groom writers to think about series format content, rather than making them convert movie content into a series. Because when they do that, it really shows on screen, and it feels like an insult to those who took subscriptions.
