The Good Lawyer:
A snooty lawyer for a large law firm, tells Madhav Mishra (Pankaj Tripathi) that they value his services, because he has an “aam aadmi chehra.” Mishra appears in Criminal Justice: A Family Matter, the fourth season of the legal thriller—a lawyer with a conscience.
The series is based in the BBC show created by Peter Moffat, and the first two seasons of Criminal Justice had used plot lines from the original, but, then branched off into its own, retaining the Lincoln Lawyer-like maverick as its lead. Over the seasons, he has lost some of his “aam aadmi” charm. In the season with Rohan Sippy returning as director, he is now a lawyer with the reputation of never losing a case, and evidently sought after by corporate law firms as well as rich clients. Knowing how courts work in our country, the legal aspects of the series go into the realm of happily-ever-after fairy tales, but Mishra’s cheery optimism, his flirty relationship with his wife, Ratna (Khushboo Atre)—the two have worked out their marital problems– but Mishra has not been able to shake off Ratna’s brother Deep (Aatm Prakash Mishra), an eager but inept assistant. His other assistant is Shivani Mathur (Barkha Singh), daughter of a courtroom rival from the past, Mandira Mathur (Mita Vasishth). Also returning to give Mishra some professional headache is the ambitious Lekha Agastya (Shweta Basu Prasad), who works with the public prosecutor’s office which is far swankier that a real one would be in India.
The new case, that Mishra takes up is that of murder. A well known surgeon Raj Nagpal (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub) is found holding the blood-soaked body of his girlfriend, Roshni (Asha Negi), by the family maid, Kamala (Amruta Sant). His estranged wife, Anju (Surveen Chawla) lives next door, and she hires Mishra for the defence. The Nagpal’s have a teenage daughter, Ira (Khushi Bhardwaj), who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, and needs special attention. Raj’s mother (Sohaila Kapur) is the other member of the family. A party for Ira, gives neighbours reason to gossip about the wife-love arrangement and a bitter fight between Raj and Roshni, hand the cops a reason to view him as a prime suspect.
The case is assigned to cop Gauri Karmarkar (Kalyanee Mulay), and it would have been an open-and-shut matter, but for the missing murder weapon. Over eight, slow-paced episodes, the murder and motives are fleshed out, other characters introduced and red herrings liberally strewn around. Some of the additions (with half a dozen writers working it)– like Gauri’s marital problems, or Roshni’s weeping mother— do not add much to the story, and just hold up the flow. Mentioning more of the plot would mean giving out spoilers, but Mishra asks a very crucial question on the end, to which the answer is not at all convincing, particularly since court cases in India go on for years.
Madhav and his team act more like investigators than lawyers, but still, the show inevitably picks up when the court scenes arrive– and watching Tripathi, Vasishth and Prasad go at the witnesses and mock each other, is a joy. (Although, which murder case without a celebrity quotient would make it to national TV news, and who are the crowds shouting for justice outside the court?) The cast of this season is the top reason to watch this season of Criminal Justice. Pankaj Tripathi’s Madhav Mishra—innately decent and consistently witty– is one of the most entertaining characters created for an Indian web series, and the actor showing no signs of ennui plays him with relish.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
