Little Shine:
The first season of Rohit Jugraj’s Chamak was a celebration of the music of Punjab, couched in a fictionalised version of the sensational and unsolved murder of legendary folk singer Amar Singh Chamkila and his wife (earlier, Kabir Chaudhary has made a documentary, Mehsampur, on the subject and Imtiaz Ali, feature film).
For the series, Jugraj imagined a child of the slain Tara Singh (Gippy Grewal) and his wife (Sharan Kaur), who was rescued in the melee and taken to Canada by his uncle. The kid grows to be the rebellious Kaala (Paramvir Singh Cheema), who has to return to Punjab to escape being arrested for attacking a cop’s son.
In India, he befriended Jazz (Isha Talwar), and, with just a faded photo of his parents, set out to find out what really happened to his parents. His father and four friends had started a music company called Teeja Sur, which is now controlled by Pratap Deol (Manoj Pahwa), who has become a powerful music baron, with three squabbling offspring demanding their share of the pie.
By the end of the first season, Kaala had revealed his true identity, sought fame as a singer and was arrested on drug charges, indicating that he is up against a formidable foe.
After introducing interesting characters, like reclusive music guru, Jugal (Suvinder Vicky), his daughter Lata (Akasa Singh), who loves Kaala; Pratap’s gay son Guru (Mohit Malik), a journalist (Kuljeet Singh) obsessed with the Tara Singh story, and Jagga, (Prince Kanwaljit Singh), Kaala’s hitman buddy with daddy issues, and ending the six-episode season on an intriguing cliffhanger, Chamak The Conclusion, just shoots itself in the foot.
There is not much of character development, and the plot gets lost in a maze of Succession-like family drama, with Guru coming into his own after gaining acceptance from his father, and slowly edging out his siblings the talentless yet ambitious Naaz (Ankita Goraya) and the greedy Jai (Dhanveer Singh). Shares of the company are given to Kaala, which causes resentment in the family. A hawk-like debtor hovers over them, and all these complications are just plain boring.
Kaala, who was so charismatic in the first season, gifted and driven, now just wears a wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression as he and Jagga cook up a harebrained scheme to kill Tara Singh’s alleged killer.
Meanwhile, Jazz, who was such a feisty woman in the earlier season, turns into a pathetic victim of her failures; Lata waits outside Kaala’s door, while he treats her like dirt. The only female from the lot, who keeps her strength and influence is Teeja Sur’s manager Rocky (Navneet Nishan), called Paaji because she is so no-nonsense.
A inordinate amount of time is taken up by Pratap Deol and Guru’s plan for an IPO, and the older man’s valid concern about the Mumbai film industry appropriating Punjabi music. Though Kaala’s career-defining hit is something about a “ganda banda“– not too inspiring.
An amusing aside– at a point of family crisis, a famous voice is heard talks to Guru on the phone, offering support. “Don’t forget you are a Deol,” says the unseen chacha.
Even if a few of these disparate strands might have amounted to something worthwhile, had Jugraj (who is co-writer with S. Fakira) not fritters them away with his scattershot approach. The music that was the main attraction now takes a backseat, though the songs playing the background are excellent– with a long list of composers working on it, they had better be.
Manoj Pahwa with his chameleonic personality dominates the show– even when he is in a coma. Mohit Malik, who gets as much, if not more, screentime than Cheema, tends to be hammy.
Also, it doesn’t look like the conclusion is here– Kaala is given another reason to go on a revenge rampage.
(This piece first appeared in scroll.in)
