Hold The Salt:
A series that stars Konkona Sensharma and Manoj Bajpayee would be worth a watch anyway, even if it turns out to be enjoyable and disappointing in equal measure. Stretching the plot to eight episodes could have something to do with a sag in the middle before it picks up to end on a satisfying note.
Abhishek (Ishqiya) Chaubey’s Killer Soup, has as its lead an unflappable femme fatale, who won’t stop at anything to fulfill her dream of opening a restaurant in the Ooty-like fictional town of Mainjur. Swati Shetty’s (Sensharma) biggest stumbling block is that her signature dish, paya soup, is inedible, though neither her husband Prabhakar (Manoj Bajpayee) nor her lover Umesh (also Bajpayee) have the heart to tell her how awful it is. The series takes its inspiration from a true incident in which a woman killed her husband and poured acid on her lover’s face to brazenly pass him off as the husband.
Chaubey, along with co-creators Unaiza Merchant, Anant Tripathi and Harshad Nalwade, had made a show with properly defined characters, literary and cinematic references for the aficionado, touches of wildly absurd humour, and plenty of delicious wickedness adding spice to Killer Soup.
Prabhakar has made a mess of his business and his foul-mouthed brother Arvind (Sayaji Shinde) won’t help him. A blackmail plot, a dead detective, the husband returning unexpectedly when Umesh is in the house, and it’s just the start of Shetty’s problems. The minute she comes up with one smart lie to convince the investigating cop, Inspector Hassan (the inimitable Nasser), something else gives, and she has to be at her sharpest to beat back the troubles pounding on her door.
Haasan’s over-eager rookie assistant, Thupalli (Anbuthasan), with a penchant for Robert Frost’s poetry and all the earnestness of a fictional detective dies when he has almost solved the case, and haunts the lonely, alcoholic senior just waiting to retire.
Arvind’s daughter Appu (Anula Navlekar), his mysterious henchman Lucas (Lal), the Shettys’ son Sandy (Jasir), Prabhu’s Kalaripayattu-practicing accountant (Kani Kusruti), the shady khansamas, where Swati surreptitiously goes to learn cooking, all have their own secrets. The characters speak Hindi, English and Tamil with no attempt to disguise disparate accents.
Beautifully shot, with unexpected visual delights like fireflies in a forest where a horrible crime is committed, a kalari performance when a crisis is about to explode, Killer Soup has a lot to enjoy. The plot gets too convoluted after the third episode and it is a slog to gather all the scattered threads. A plot like that would work only in a small town or village setting, without the urban profusion of cameras, ease of investigative tools like location-tracking and DNA tests (there is one test done though, mentioned in passing), but the atmospherics, fabulous performances and sheer creative audacity makes Killer Soup worth sampling. Manoj Bajpayee and Konkona Sensharma can make any role sparkle, but when they have such complexity to work with, they all but set the screen ablaze.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
