Tuesday, September 24, 2019

The Family Man (Amazon Prime Web Series)


With the success of Sacred Games, Mirzapur and other web series, viewers are always on the look out for web series on Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc to see which one does better.

Amazon Prime has come up with The Family Man web series. Very interestingly the trailer of the series was introduced in the month of september while Bard of Blood series of Netflix which again looks to have similar plots (as per the trailers) was running from august month onward.

Was this intentional or not only time will tell, the Bard of Blood will be released on sept 27.

Coming back to The Family Man web series, the story plot is about an undercover analyst who has to circumvent certain attacks from taking place and prevent the inevitable India Pakistan war.

The main character is played by Manoj Bajpai namely Srikant, a senior analyst. He is seen back on the screen after ages. He has a loving family, his wife Suchitra (Priyamani) and two children Atharv (Vedant Sinha) & Dhriti (Mehal Thakur).

Only his wife knows about his real job, while the kids think their father works in a government cushioned job and too polite to stand up for himself.

He also has a sidekick by the name of JK (Sharib Hashmi) and a rookie Zoya (Shreya Dhanwanthary) for support.

It was a normal day when Srikant and his team were suppose to interrogate two criminals Moosa (Neeraj Madhav) & Asif (Dinesh Prabhakar) and share their report to higher authorities.

Then again things were not meant to go this way as it was the start of the roller coaster ride that would lead them to the bigger plot of an impending attack on the Indian soil.

Even as the main plot was on the works, their were other aspects of the story too, like the exploration of the husband and wife relationship, daughter's attempt of giving into peer pressure, wife's closeness to another guy (Sharad Kelkar) and the divine work-life balance.

As one goes through the complete series, it leaves a lot to be desired. There were some very obvious glaring loop holes which are hard to miss. One has to actually wonder if no one thought of correcting it given that it was a web series.

The sex scene was anything but sensuous. How can someone with needle inserted in hand for drip move his hand so freely? We surely have a lot of work to do to iron out such small details. I hope they were able to fool the viewers.

The way Moosa's real identity was discovered leaves you speechless. If one has seen espionage movies/tv shows/web series there are better ways to execute it.

This is perhaps the only web series wherein the Indian government is getting in touch with Pakistan government and sharing intelligence in order to prevent the attack from happening in India. If only this could be happen in reality...

There seem to be no direction when it came to highlighting other aspects of the story. The intend was there but sadly no execution. Not enough screen time given to build on it or connect with the viewers. It was a case of hit & miss. Perhaps 10 episodes were too less to show it all.

The direction of the series by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. who incidentally happens to be the writes too along with Suman Kumar could have done well. There were certain scenes which seems to be abruptly moved on to the next scene.

Editing could have been better. For example the son finding his father's gun and hiding it under the pillow of the sofa even as both the mother and daughter make their way to home. Then out of the blue to cover it up, in another scene he informs his father about his gun but does not asks what he was doing with it. Nor their is much reaction on the father side if the son could have killed himself with the real gun. The writing, direction & editing falters..

Manoj Bajpai has been good in his role, so did Gul Panag who stood out in a small role. Priyamani, Sharad Kelkar & Dalip Tahil were not given enough screen time for their performances to do justice. Neeraj Madhav stood out in his villainous role.

The climax of the series could have been done differently but then again there could be more than meets the eyes. As suspense is still maintained if the attack is successful or not.

The series has its moments, then again it fails to get you on a high. Hope the second season is a learning.

Its a one time watch.

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