Rating – 3.5 stars on 5
Survival dramas have always been a genre that the audience loves to binge on. Kaala Paani, a web series about life and death on Netflix, takes us through what happens when a mysterious epidemic breaks out in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2027. Droves of tourists are heading to the island to celebrate a Mahotsav (festival) when people start showing symptoms of a disease. The Covid 19 pandemic has just passed, when this new disease comes up and seven people die on the island. And it’s left to Dr Soudamini Singh (Mona Singh) to figure out what this epidemic is and try to find a cure for it. Just as what happened during the Covid 19 pandemic, the loss of human lives and at what cost becomes the conundrum.
The mahotsav could become a superspreader for the fictitious Leptospiral Hemorrhagic Fever (LHF-27) and kill hundreds, so do they stop the festival? The egoistic cop (Amey Wagh), the smug Lieutenant Governor (Ashutosh Gowariker), the corrupt taxi operator (Sukant Goel), the medical intern (Radhika Mehrotra) and the doctor (Chinmay Mandlekar) – are all characters that are pivotal to the drama and the actors have pulled these roles off well. While Mona Singh’s role may not be as extensive, she is critical to the series and makes an indelible mark.
Kaala Paani, has been written by Biswapati Sarkar and directed by Sameer Saxena and Amit Golani. The fact that Sarkar has penned a survival drama set on an island off India makes the premise very intriguing – what would happen if the mainland decides to cut off the island due to the epidemic? Would everyone on the island perish? The web series keeps reminding us of what we went through during the Covid 19 pandemic and it makes it all the more relatable. Having said that, Kaala Paani tries to incorporate several themes into the story apart from the epidemic – human greed, bureaucracy and corruption, administrative obstacles, and how people fleece natural resources with no thought of the consequences, and what happens to the indigenous people of the islands. The writer has made an effort to neatly blend the themes together and it works for the most part in the seven episodes. The irreparable damage to ecology on one hand and how humanity can be saved from the epidemic on the other is ultimately what Kaala Paani boils down to.
Kaala Paani has enough drama, twists and turns, and gripping human stories to keep us engaged. This is one of the better Indian shows that has been released on Netflix this year.
