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No of episodes: 8
Star Cast: Gulshan Devaiah, Anjali Patil, Heeba Shah, Aakash Dahiya, Jamie Altar, Lalit Tiwari
Director: Anubhuti Kashyap
Directed by Anubhuti Kashyap and written by Dibya Chatterjee, Anirban Dasgupta, Sourav Ghosh, the story of Afsos focuses on the character Nakul (played by Gulshan Devaiah), a failed writer and a self-critical, self-proclaimed loser whose only purpose in life is to die. He attempted to kill himself 11 times, but could never embrace death. In fact, every time he tries to kill himself, someone else ends up dying. Nakul also seeks therapy from Shokla (played by Anjali Patil) who is very well aware of his suicidal tendencies.
After constantly failing to kill himself, Nakul signs a contract and hires a hitwoman to take his life. However, none of it works out. But there’s a lot of mess after a sage Fokatiya Baba (played by Lalit Tiwari) from Uttarakhand comes to Bombay in search of an immortal man. A policeman named Bir from Uttarakhand (played by Aakash Dahiya), a scientist from London Dr Goldfish (played by Jamie Alter) and Upadhyay, the hitwoman, played by Heeba Shah entire the picture.
The writing by Dibya, Anirban and Sourav is tight and hence, the episodes range from 22-27 minutes. Anubhuti Kashyap’s dark world and direction with such humorous touch will keep you hooked till the end.
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A topic about suicide and death that has a lot of chances of going wrong was taken care well by the writers and the directors while showing it on screen. With references from Coen Brothers’ 1996 black comedy film Fargo, Kashyap has smartly told us the story of her character Nakul and others. The dialogues in the film will make you chuckle. My most favourite one is, “My life story is so poorly written, that I feel like I’ve written it myself.” This also applies to the web series because if the writing was intelligent and humorous, the makers would’ve never succeeded to set the tones of dark comedy, thriller and suspense throughout.
The performances in Afsos are phenomenal. Gulshan Devaiah effortlessly plays Nakul without making us feel pity for his situation. His character had chances of going caricaturish, but well, he managed to pull it off quite well. Another strong character in the series is Upadhyay, the hitwoman played by Sheeba. She kills people will not remorse (also means afsos) and enjoys it. When the therapist Shloka asks her why she kills people, she gives an interesting answer which I won’t reveal. You have to watch the series for that! But the answer was quite smart and also showed us that the killing people is everything for her and when she fails to kill Nakul several times, she feels dejected and a loser, just how our death-lover man feels. The supporting cast is amazing and is the driving force of the storytelling.
The music of the film is endearing and suits well to the mood and setting of the characters and shows. I never thought I’ll be listening to soothing songs about killing and guns and death also end up humming it.
Afsos isn’t a regular dark comedy thriller. It also gives us important insights into how some people are greedy for immortality, how some people want to die because they can’t do life anymore! It also builds a connection with our history of Independence which will make you LOL for sure! The makers are not here to preach you but to entertain and shock you and well, they do manage it. The cameos by Dhruv Sehgal, Biswa Kalyan Rath and others shouldn’t be missed too.
The series ends on a curious note. Well, considering this cliff hanger, we hope for a sequel because well, we are sold into Afsos and everyone who is a part of it!
Star Ratings: 4/5 Stars
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