Aranyak – drama series review

I think Indian movie makers are slowly picking the nuances of making content for OTT. All this while, either they were preparing content that had too less of a storyline to be stretched across multiple episodes or too long a story to be crammed into an half hour slot. With Aranyak, I think the wheel has truly turned the corner. Editing for webseries would be a new skill for our folks I guess and this series truly has some good cuts. Every episode bringing in something new and the thrill element maintained, all the while moving the narrative towards the case investigation, despite so many sub plots blooming everywhere. The story revolves around a murder investigation of a teenage girl, crime scene happening to be the hotel of the local MP and modus operandi reflecting handiwork of a serial killer, feared as the “leopard man”. There are several sub plots primary of which being that of the female lead, the lady cop, who is about to take an yearlong sabbatical to spend time with her family. Her replacement office has his own back story that has connection to the case on hand. There are the usual backstabbing, traitor characters on politicians payroll, the usual suspects who turn out to be innocent, the supposedly good guys turning up the rotten ones, form the rest of the plot. The location happens to be Himachal Pradesh (?) and all those forests and snow gives a total foreign feel to the story. The screenplay is solid for most of the part except towards the end where there are some obvious misses. And the ending appears rushed, with the intent for a sequel probably. It does raises a scare at the ease with which drug culture is being depicted on the series, even for the supposedly small town on a hill. Like drinking, which has now been made as common a scene on screen as any other, that it has almost became a defacto scene on every movie, hope taking drugs is not shown as an acceptable culture. It was quite shocking and scary at the simplicity with which it was depicted and passed over as an acceptable practice. Censor for OTT in India is fast asleep and requires new rules to be written for viewer discretion and guidelines. Unlike movies, these happen to be available for viewing right inside their phones and living rooms. Some of the content that is getting parried on OTT are downright vulgar and unsuitable for many age groups, leave alone 18+. High time someone woke up to the threat.