Afsos is a well executed Indian Black comedy TV show. Something that one wouldn't expect. Written by some of the well known comedians, Anirban Dasgupta, Sourav Ghosh and Dibya Chatterjee. They have managed to come up with some really hilarious moments during the first season, moments where you laugh but later think back and think, should I have laughed that? It was so evil. And that my friends is a well executed dark comedy right there.
The director of the series, Anubhuti Kashyap (I thought she might be related to Anurag Kashyap, and turns out she is his sister) has done a good job handling the music, intro, direction and acting. Kudos on the background score of the show and the intro title. The graphics were every professional and catchy and you don't want to skip it.
But that's where I feel the show's creators focused more on the intro and the music, but lost their tight grip on the story and the screenplay. The story had everything going on, but nothing making sense at one point. It was all over the place and the writers didn't have a main theme. Was it suicide? Was it urban male privilege? Was it big city loneliness? Or was it about Karma and destiny? One can't really tell. The story was illogical, and I am ok with it when watching Indian shows, because its there a lot of the times, but this had such strong moments of losing logic and with the scattered story and the loose character development, that there were moments where you want to leave the show mid-way also.
Talking of character development, the characters were looser than an old pair of pajamas. What was the reason for Upadhya to drive her to kill was never understood clearly. Upadhya was a major character and its like her character background for the show was just 1 line. A serial killer who just has to kill. I feel there were so many characters, all scattered all over the place. What was the purpose of that therapist? Why was shloka trying to avoid Nakul towards the end of the episode? Why did she always lie? There are so many questions that still remain, which it feels like the show never aimed to answer and leave it to the users imagination.
The narrative of the show had its pick up moments but overall it was a little slow and lacking the luster it deserved. Being a thriller about suicide, serial killer, and immortality potion, they could have done a wonderful job. But they just did an ok job and le the show air.
The actors were good in acting but due to the poor narrative and character development, their talents goes lost and the loose narrative makes it feel like they are doing theatre and not taking this show seriously.
Overall, with such a bold topic of suicides in hand, a good storyline based on the Bengali novel, "Golper Goru Chaande", good directors, writers and actors, the show could have gone to become India's Fargo (as the show shows the word a couple of times initially) or even more. But it failed to even come close and leave its at home audience who doesn't know of Fargo also unsatisfied. I wish they had brought it closer to Andhadhun even a little bit, but they failed to do that too. Now, while writing this, I understand why their named the show Afsos. Because after watching the show you say, it could be such a better show, such as afsos!
It was a good attempt, and I hope this show encourages others to try at some black comedy, but as far as Afsos goes, watch it for the first attempt, its story line than connects with history and watch it for some of its dark but good moments. Mainly, watch it to encourage more of such shows to come up and to encourage the makers to experiment more. It's not a treat, but its worth a watch.
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