This Boman Irani starrer should have worked as a suspenseful thriller, but it barely works on occasion and comes across as weirdly bloodless overall.
Families can be the most complex human entity, and what ties its members isn’t always love: it can also be secrets. The six-part online series ‘Masoom,’ directed by Mihir Desai and helmed by showrunner Gurmmeet Singh, the couple behind ‘Mirzapur,’ follows the Kapoor family in Punjab as they respond to the death of the one who served as its fulcrum in various ways. The loving husband (Boman Irani) appears strangely matter-of-fact, the elder daughter (Manjari Fadnis) struggles to keep her composure, the son (Veer Rajwant Singh) struggles to conceal a crucial aspect of himself, and the younger daughter (Samara Tijori) believes the death was not caused by a fall, but rather by a murder.
‘Masoom,’ based on the 2018 Irish TV series ‘Blood,’ begins with a quick introduction to the main characters in the village of Falauli: the Delhi-based younger daughter sobs as she drives towards her home, devastated by the loss of her mother, the local cop (Manu Rishi Chaddha) who keeps an eye on the populace, the father, a well-respected figure who is running for elections, and the two siblings.
On the same day as the death, a huge sum of money goes missing. Is there a link between the two? There are a few more people in the story who are old friends and compatriots of the Kapoors. Kapoor Sr’s attractive coworker who appears to be too close to him. A son’s pal who appears to be up to no good. And a younger daughter’s buddy who has never really recovered from his father’s death.
All of this should have been turned into a suspenseful thriller, but the end product is only occasionally effective and oddly bloodless overall. Samara Tijori, whose character drives much of the action, is depressing to the point of being monochrome. Veer Rajwant Singh and Manu Rishi Chaddha, among the other performers, strike a chord. And while it’s nice to see Boman Irani in a role other than the kind of supporting roles he usually receives in Bollywood, his part could have been written with more heft. You know he knows more than he’s letting on, but he only reveals a significant portion of it near the end, when we’ve learned everything.
