Mrs. Deshpande series review: A stoic Madhuri Dixit meanders through a dated show

A middle-aged woman lives like a veteran in prison, where cooking food is her forte. When we first meet her, it is difficult not to wonder what she hides behind her seemingly innocent face. She is the first one to get up in the morning, as we see her almost robotically exercise with the first rays of sun hitting her from a nearby window. The inmates know her as Zeenat, but it won’t be long when her real name is revealed as she lets out a sly smile. She is Mrs. Deshpande. We know her as Madhuri Dixit.

Co-writer and director Nagesh Kukunoor gives an unassuming introduction to Bollywood’s dance queen in his mystery-thriller show, Mrs. Deshpande. Titled with a certain panache, the six-episode series has little sign of pretense hiding up its sleeve. It is told with a deliberate dryness that often feels too convenient and uninventive, especially for the layered serial killer story that it wants to be. The film searches for life as it mutedly follows a senior cop, Arun (Priyanshu Chatterjee) aided by the titular convicted serial killer, Mrs. Deshpande (Madhuri) to solve a series of murders copying her peculiar modus operandi. Arun assigns a dedicated cop, Tejas (Siddharth Chandekar) on the case to work with Mrs. Deshpande and find the new killer.

Though adopted from the atmospheric French show, La Mante (2018), Mrs. Deshpande springs up memories of Indian television’s early 2000s era crime shows. The straightforwardness in the storytelling takes away any sense of mystery in the plot. The visuals are largely derivative too. In a scene early on, the dreaded copycat killer is filmed from behind, approaching his next prey. He wears a typical black leather jacket and gloves and just when he is about strike, a truck horn screeches to make him flinch. It is all too basic to ever reciprocate the feeling of fear. A substandard C.I.D. (1998-) episode mirrored the feeling with more urgency in the 2010s.

Going for this laid-back approach isn’t new for Nagesh. Just earlier this year, he made it work diligently in The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case. The minimalism in the form lent itself quite well to the dense investigative-drama where political stakes reigned high. It also served the timelines of the story quite well as it was set in the 1990s. In Mrs. Deshpande, however, the same tone in the aesthetics goes on to work against the nature of the show. It also doesn’t really help that the writing here is not as complex as it should be, treating serial killers merely as people with a broken past rather than exploring the myriad manipulative tendencies that make them who they are. The series feels like a thing of the past as it doesn’t necessarily have anything new to say apart from presenting Madhuri as a grey character.

Her performance is also not revelatory, as the clinical appeal of Nagesh’s craft extends to numb down the emotions. It becomes hard to believe her as the vigilante serial killer as the story doesn’t really work on building her inner dynamics. There is a lack of visceral honesty in the character. Even Siddharth as the young, angry cop comes out as more sketchy than authentic due to the calculated restraint. At one point, his scene with a suspect in an interrogation room starts to feel almost like a script reading session for how plainly the dialogues are delivered.

A similar jarring rhythm follows in another scene where Mrs. Deshpande invites Tejas to have mutton curry made by her. This is also a sequence where she tries to know more about his personal life, as he maintains guard on how much to reveal to a convicted criminal. A kind of awkwardness begins to seep in the scene for how staged everything appears. The edges are too sharp to allow for some spontaneity to catch on. Tejas takes his first bite and says nonchalantly that the mutton is good. “Just good?” asks Mrs. Deshpande. Tejas smiles and adds, “Very good”. The show, however, doesn’t allow space for such pleasantries.

Mrs. Deshpande is currently streaming on JioHotstar