Aarya Review: Sushmita Sen on a poster (courtesy disneyplushotstarvip)
Throw: Sushmita Sen, Chandrachur Singh, Sikander Kher, Vikas Kumar, Manish Chaudhari, Alexx O’Nell, Ankur Bhatia
Created by: Ram Madhvani
Director: Sandeep Modi, Vinod Rawat
Evaluation: 2.5 stars (out of 5)
Sushmita Sen does a fantastic job head on Aarya, a nine-episode Hotstar crime show about a woman who takes over the pharmaceutical company, the opium plantation and the drug warehouse of her family after the death of her husband the day after his promise that he is ready to put his old shady life behind him. As tragedy strikes, titular character struggles to make sure his three children are safe, matches minds with an anti-narcotics cell officer determined to stop the drug racket and sets out on a mission to find her husband’s killer.
The actress has been absent for a while but she touches the ground running Aarya. The character she embodies is never completely in control in a toxic word dominated by men, but Sen is at the top of her art throughout the process. As long as she is there, Aarya, adapted for India by Ram Madhvani and Sandeep Modi from the Dutch drama series Penoza, keeps you glued to the screen. The rest of the action not so much.
Co-actor Chandrachur Singh is also back after a long hiatus. His role is much shorter – the character dies in the middle of the second episode. Singh quickly disappears, but his Tej Sareen, who runs a pharmaceutical business in Rajasthan with two partners – brother-in-law Sangram (Ankur Bhatia) and family friend Jawahar (Namit Das) – hangs over the story until the end. On the one hand, his LP collection of Hindi films from the 1960s and 1970s contributes generously to the retro soundtrack. Other than that, a USB stick that promises to close the trail of black money and drug deals with the Russian mafia.
Tej’s untimely death pushes his wife Aarya Sareen and her three children into a crisis which naturally takes a little time to resolve, especially because it generates in its aftermath a lot of intrigue and danger. Without solving the unsolved problems around the murder of the man – the outcome of these imponderables forms the knot of the tale – the widow of Tej Sareen cannot advance and take her children to safety.
Aarya sums up her philosophy in two statements which she makes in separate scenes, one in the penultimate episode, the other in the last. “The past is not important; my children’s future is, ”she says. A little later, she reminds a cop that there are times when you don’t choose between what is good and what is bad, but between evil and lesser evil. She knows that she has to finish what Tej started and pay the price for the mistakes made by him and his partners, including a case of ill-advised heroin.
Aarya Assessment: It has several proven quality players
The sprawling saga focuses on a family, the criminal enterprise they own, a police officer on the lookout and a drug dealer who wants to recover his shipment of stolen heroin. The series gives maximum weight to Aarya and her children – Veer (Viren Vazirani), Arundhati (Virti Vaghani), the two teenagers groping in the dark and Adi, eight years old (Pratyaksh Panwar). The three are naturally shaken by the death of their mild-mannered father.
The youngest – under whose eyes Tej was riddled with bullets – is unable to get rid of the trauma, while the two older siblings face the throes of growth and the awkwardness of their sexual arousal. These parts of the story have their moments, the young actors bringing great support to Sushmita Sen to create a living portrait of a family struggling with a multitude of challenges. Relationships are clearly the strong point of Ram Madhvani. He makes these passages from Aarya count.
The series, co-directed by Sandeep Modi and Vinod Rawat, hesitates in the representation of the crime and punishment part of the story although Vikas Kumar, in the role of ACP Khan, who was one step away from breaking the ring of the drug but had his plans scuttled by Tej’s death, made a strong impression as a tenacious investigator.
Aarya Review: Watch the show for Sushmita Sen
The other key characters – Sangram (who chills his heels in the slammer for most of the show), Jawahar, a coke-sniffing wreck that can’t help but get into trouble, and Shekhawat (Manish Chaudhari), the drug dealer seeking a reward from the woman and Tej’s business partners – don’t rise above the back-and-forth that takes place in the criminal bidding game that men play.
The show fails to create the kind of tension you would expect from a thriller on the edge of the seat. Shorter, tighter episodes – all but one chapter Aarya has a runtime of less than 50 minutes – could have delivered stronger hits. Strangely for a series that exceeds the eight-hour mark, many characters remain underdeveloped.
Aarya is essentially a spectacle of a woman emerging from her shell and asserting herself in the face of serious adversity. The other female characters, in a rather incongruous way, are treated summarily. Maya (Maya Sarao), is the wife of Jawahar. Hairdresser Hina (Sugandha Garg) is Sangram’s girlfriend. Rajeshwari (Sohaila Kapur) is the separated spouse of Zorawar Rathod (Jayant Kripalani), a patriarch who now lives with the much younger Radhika (Flora Saini). That makes four women. None of them receive it because of a scenario that is too focused on the activities of criminals and hitmen determined to send the count of bodies in a spiral.
Aarya Review: It’s a show about a woman coming out of her shell
Zorawar is the father of Aarya and her younger sister Soundarya (Priyasha Bhardwaj), whose marriage to an American Sanskrit musician and scholar, Bob Wilson (Alexx O’Nell), kicks off the series. One of the two hitmen, Daulat (Sikander Kher), Zorawar’s trusted aide, is introduced at the family event. Another, Sampat (Vishwajeet Pradhan), the main henchman of Sekhawat, jumps into the fray a little later. The two remain dark characters who never receive a clear context.
The cast of Aarya has several proven quality players. Jayant Kripalani and Manish Chaudhari do their part to animate the show. Sikander Kher too. But it is up to Sushmita Sen to keep the series with its natural ability to fill each image with its dominant presence.
Another actor who delights in the opportunities the script offers him is Vikas Kumar. For all intents and purposes, he is the key male character in the drama and he does full justice to the role. The child actors, especially Virti Vaghani as a precocious 14-year-old girl who writes poems inspired by a chapter by Bhagvad Gita, shine through the mist that Aarya often tends to disappear.
Aarya is uneven. Sushmita Sen is not. Watch the show for her.
