Rating : ⭐️
Genre : Drama
Year : 2022
Season: 1 Episodes: 7
Director : Mihir Desai
Cast : Boman Irani, Samara Tijori, Manjari Fadnis, Upasana, Manu Rishi Chaddha
Kid rating : PG-15
Masoom is a series on HotStar (available via Hulu in the US) and stars Boman Irani and Samara Tijori (Deepak Tijori’s daughter) . The series is about a family living in Falauli, a small town in Punjab. Doctor Balraj Kapoor (Irani) runs a nursing home and is also trying to get into politics by contesting the local elections. His wife Gunwant is unwell and remains within the confines of her home, writing sad poetry. She still loves her husband and her family very much but there seems to be a rift between them. The rift is strongest between Dr Kapoor and his youngest daughter Sana (Tijori) who has left the family and now works and lives in Delhi.
When Gunwant mysteriously dies Sana comes home. Once there, she finds her father’s behavior very suspicious, and already at odds with him, suspects that he has killed her mother. Of course she has no proof of this, but a few phone messages and some conversations she has had with her mother lead her to believe that her father has done this awful deed. The question is – will she be able to prove it?
Masoom started off very strong – all sinister gazes and sense of foreboding. Everyone in the Kapoor family has their motivations and their own axe to grind, but the writing tries too hard to sway us one way. Dr Kapoor seems callous about his wife’s death, and a tad too villain-ish – he almost threatens Sana, and then in the bits where he tries to be fatherly, we don’t quite believe him. Sana, for her part, has a one-track mind, she only sees her father in a negative light.
The intensity of the series seems to wither away as the series progresses. I was disappointed in the ending because it seemed to be a case of creating a mountain out of a mole hill. While Boman Irani does very well with what he’s been given, he can’t help the poor writing. Samara Tijori was fine but I wish that her character had had more depth – all she does in the series is look sad, suspicious and act rashly.
The other characters should have added to the sinister premise of the story but are sketched poorly. Sana’s siblings seemed kinda wishy-washy, and I didn’t get their deal. There was the off-kilter uncle swearing undying devotion to brother Balraj, and threatening Sana (who’s his niece!).
Masoom’s characters are unlikeable; I hadn’t a whit of sympathy for anyone, not even the lead protagonist Sana, who’s a headstrong brat, unhappy with almost everything. That, in addition to the one-note characterization, put paid to this series. This should have been an engrossing thriller, but ends up being a namby-pamby, underwhelming bore.
Kidwise: Scenes of domestic violence. A scene with partial nudity.
