Black Widows Is Thoroughly Entertaining With Great Performances
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
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By Linus Garg
First publised on 2021-01-14 02:13:20
About the Author
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
Black Widows (Zee5) is an enthralling murder and revenge web series that moves forward on intrigue and dark humour. Although an adaptation of the successful Finnish TV series Muskat Lesket, Black Widows has been suitably adapted for Indian audiences by Radhika Anand and directed by Birsa Dasgupta. It has an ensemble cast with famous names from the Bengali film industry and each one of them does complete justice to his or her role to keep the viewer hooked till the last episode.
The story is about three friends who are trapped in violent marriages. What do they do? Do they bear their miseries in a silent manner or strike back at their vile husbands? The women in the series adopt the latter route and plant a bomb in the speed boat their husbands are using for a joy ride during a holiday. Two are killed and one survives. Even as the Black Widows think they are now free, life is not as rosy as they would want it to be.
Their husbands have business and other affairs that make them the target of assorted people bent on getting back their dues. Hence, Veera (Mona Singh) discovers her husband Jatin (Sharad Kelkar) owes money to his business partner Ramiz (Shaheb Bhattacharya) while Jayati (Swastika Mukherjee) finds that her husband's son Jahan (Nikhil Bhambhri) from a former marriage will not leave her alone as he wants the property left behind by his father. Kavita (Shamita Shetty) feels lonely and broke as the insurance money is not forthcoming and finds out that the house she lives in is owned by her husband Nilesh's (Vipul Roy) uncle and he wants to throw her out.
The twist in the tale come in the form of Jatin who survives the blast and wants to strike back at Inaaya (Raima Sen), a ruthless businesswoman who wants to infect the country with a lab-made virus so that she can mint money with her vaccine for the same. Inaaya doesn't stop short at anything and has police and bureaucrats eating out of her hands. The intrigue multiplies when no one seems what he or she is and Inspector Pankaj Mishra (Parambata Chatterjee) and Inspector Rinku (Shruti Vyas) keep on chasing red herrings as they are misled by their corrupt senior Barry Talukdar (Sabyasachi Mukherjee) who works for Inaaya.
The 12 episodes are well crafted (although some parts feel repetitive and it could have been brought down to 10 episodes) and keep the viewer hooked. This is in large part due to the excellent acting. While Mona Singh is competent as usual, it is Swastika who steals the show with her excellent portrayal of Jayati, at once strong (after her husband's death) in the scenes where she deals with Inaaya and vulnerable when she deals with Inspector Pankaj. Shamita Shetty also excels as Kavita, a confused woman who chases ghosts and needs men to keep her occupied. A special mention must also be made for Nikhil Bhambhri who puts in a class act as Jahan, not overawed by an actress of Swastika Mukherjee's caliber. Watch this thoroughly entertaining series.
