Your Honor Review: Jimmy Sheirgill’s series is captivating (courtesy of YouTube)
DISCARD: Jimmy Shergill, Varun Badola, Mita Vashisht, Parul Gulati, Pulkit Makol, Yashpal Sharma
DIRECTOR: E. Niwas
EVALUATION: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Your Honor, a captivating original from SonyLIV in 12 episodes, stays true to the title and, to some extent, the tone of the Israeli series from which it was adapted. Writer Ishan Trivedi and director E. Niwas transport the story to Ludhiana and situate the action in the context of a linguistic divide between them and us in the underground world.
The spaces in which the series takes place – courtrooms, residence of a judge, police station, interiors of a district prison, CRPF colony, university campus and streets, neighborhoods (from chic civil lines to Gandi Chhapri neglected) and other nooks and crannies of the largest city in and around Punjab – give a distinct impression to this incisive indigenous version of a universal history of power, privilege and manipulation.
The protagonist is a respected judge who plunges into a quagmire in an effort to save his only son from the law – and from the underworld – after a hit-and-run case sent a feared criminal to hospital with injuries to potentially life-threatening head. The incident raised fears of a gang war and put city cops on alert.
Each tense episode of Your Honor lasts about 35 minutes. The captivating tale swings one way, then another, then another with sustained momentum while maintaining its balance. The judge and his motherless son are the key figures. As the screws gradually tighten on the duo, a slow-burning ethical and emotional conflict takes place between the man and the boy with asthma.
Bishan Khosla (Jimmy Sheirgill) session judge knows the law thoroughly. His cunning manners are posed in contrast to the wide-eyed seriousness of his former protégé Ruma Pathak (Parul Gulati), who is only three months in the profession and is still looking for his first independent case. The legal greenhorn plays by the book even when she has reason to suspect that everything is not fair and that her mentor is not opposed to using it to cover her tracks.
At first glance, Khosla is an idealistic and upright man. In a first sequence, he issues an order suspending the demolition of a colony of migrants. But later in the story, how far he has gone too far on the path that takes him away from his principles, he tells Ruma that “there are no angels in this story”. He’s not wrong.
Neither Ruma nor Indu (Richa Pallod), exasperated wife of a CRPF man who makes the judge’s tender for reasons that the woman cannot understand, are not spared the constant erosion of the truth and ideals. They are certainly not to blame for what is going on, but they are inevitably sucked in.
But whatever the case, they can never be like Kiran Sekhon (Mita Vashisht), a cynical police inspector who sniffs for his pound of flesh. She has seen enough of this world not to be taken by surprise. She plays the game, stands firm and, when things get out of hand, she doesn’t hesitate to get her hands dirty.
At the other end of the moral spectrum, the adolescent son of the judge, Abeer (Pulkit Makol) seeks comfort in the words of his chain smoking maternal grandmother Sheel Tandon (Suhasini Mulay), a retired judge who does has nothing but contempt for her son. stepfather, and in the company of his university sports teacher Amrita Singh (Taniya Kalra).
In a state of intoxication, Abeer complains to the latter that his father “does not care at all about how I feel”. Not that Judge Khosla has any empathy for Kashi Samthar (Varun Badola). The latter, deputy commander of the CRPF, indebted to the judge for all the help he received in his life, lives in his official quarters with his pregnant wife Indu and his two schoolchildren.
Kashi is inevitably drawn into the plot devised by judge Khosla. His success rests on the fabrication of a guy from the fall of an 18-year-old car thief, Shashi Tiwari, aka Guddan (Parag Gupta), and on the fact that he will not knock beans over.
The narrative strands and arcs of competing characters serve to probe the nature of justice, the law enforcement process, the dynamics of the police force and the social cracks in a city divided between two gangs, one of the inhabitants Punjabi, the other from Migrants Poorvanchali.
The judge, who is lining up for a promotion to the High Court, panics when he learns that the victim of the accident caused by his son (who, to make matters worse, was driving the car without a license) is the first – Born to a imprisoned but feared crime lord, Satbir Mudki (Mahabir Bhullar) of what is called the Pathankotiya gang.
The latter’s hot-headed son, Harnam (Kunj Anand), is at large. It is not only the police who are in suspense, but also Pandit (Yashpal Sharma), the leader of the rival gang. From there, every gesture by judge Khosla and every lie he resorts to is a blow to the values he is bound to defend.
His repeated violation of the line of acceptable behavior occurs in the midst of a raging gang war between a local crime syndicate and a mafia outfit led by men called bhaiyyas in police circles and in the underworld. Tensions between the two groups intensify when the accident on an isolated stretch of the road is considered an attempted murder.
The first eight episodes of Your Honor are intense and intriguing. For an hour after that, much of which was spent on the two gangs to settle their scores, the pace slowed somewhat. But in the final act, the series finds its urgency.
Powers of Jimmy Sheirgill Your Honor, piloting the pivot character with the greatest control. It delimits the moral contradictions of man without having to overwork even a little bit. Mita Vashisht is brilliant as a simmering, sneering and clogging-up police officer with a keen sense of self-preservation. Varun Badola is standing in the guise of a father who prides himself on working for the nation but is forced by circumstances to bend over.
But no one in the cast makes such an emphatic impression as Parul Gulati. Playing on the soft foot in a world where men walk against the tide, she discovers with confidence and conviction a woman who deserves to be rooted.
The verdict: Your Honor is striking. It is a marathon but it does not weigh heavy.
