Bestseller Review: Eight Chapters Of Unmitigated Ennui

A voice on the soundtrack, referring to an automobile that has been intentionally set ablaze, sums it up succinctly: if it works, it is magic; if it doesn't, it is a disaster. A couple of episodes in, it is easy to suspect what Bestseller, screenwriter duo Althea Kaushal and Anvita Dutt's second web series of the week (the other one is Mithya, also about authorship and plagiarism), is.

The eight-episode show, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is devoid of magic although it has a bag full of tricks. The fault lies principally with the book that it is adapted from - Ravi Subramanian's The Bestseller She Wrote. It spins a far-fetched, vapid mystery yarn about a writer who without so much as a by your leave exploits a 'real life' story to fuel a book. The web series that the tale is parlayed into is rudimentary, when not outright limpid.

Bestseller, helmed by Mukul Abhyankar, plays out in the worlds of publishing and ad filmmaking, but neither the words nor the images that the show strings together across its eight chapters - each segment ends with one character or another sequentially uttering the number - break free from unevenness and jump out at you.

The bizarre plotline rests on a Hindi-language bestseller that is hailed for its originality although its title is borrowed from a Sant Kabir couplet about the pitfalls that await an uninitiated visitor to Kashi. The success of the book earns the author pots of money and legions of fans. Even as the celebrated author struggles to repeat that enviable high, it turns out that there still are people out there willing to risk their lives for him.

One such is the self-effacing Meetu Mathur (Shruti Haasan), a girl from a small, ancient holy town who has fled her fate. She aspires to be a writer and idolises Tahir Wazir (Arjan Bajwa). The latter runs into Meetu at a coffee shop where she works. Three scars on her wrist catches the bestselling author's attention. Behind each wound, the girl reveals, is a substantial story that, as Tahir instinctively figures out, could help him end his extended dry patch.

Tahir hires Meetu as an assistant. He intends to pass her ideas off as his own and write a sequel to his career-defining second book, which was set in the very part of the world that the girl has run away from to seek her fortune in Mumbai.

At the same time, the celebrated writer's wife, Mayanka Kapoor (Gauahar Khan), a hotshot ad filmmaker far more in control than her sullen husband, hires a geeky and gifted intern, Parth Acharya (Satyajeet Dubey), a man who has a way with tech devices. While Tahir digs into Meetu's tumultuous past, Mayanka continues with her high-flying, award-winning ways.

Parth, the enthusiastic newbie, has a plan up his sleeves. He assumes the garb of a vicious troll determined to bring Tahir down to earth. On a social media network called Tweaker, he relentlessly baits Tahir, a feted writer hitherto accustomed only to adulation.

Meetu is brutally attacked and a video of the shocking incident is emailed, ostensibly by a fan-turned-foe, to Tahir by way of a warning about what lies ahead. The writer turns to the police for help. Enter Mithun Chakraborty in the guise of a jaded CID officer Lokesh Pramanik, who is due to retire in three weeks.

The elderly cop has nothing to lose - later in the series, we learn how much he has had to sacrifice in the line of duty. He plunges headlong into the case with a young cyber-crime cell sub-inspector Urmila Ranade (Sonalee Kulkarni). The threats to Tahir increase. The police investigator redoubles his efforts to find the man behind the menacing messages.

So, what really is Bestseller - a revenge drama, a story of a man's overarching ambition, a tale of a cyber-criminal with an agenda, a police procedural or all of these rolled into one? With a bit of everything thrown into the cauldron, the series is a veritable muddle that even the energetic actors in the cast cannot save.

The script gives Shruti Haasan a great deal of space to develop the character and capture a sharp personality shift. Ditto for Satyajeet Dubey. Neither puts a foot wrong but the two actors are hard pressed to rise above the drearily convoluted morass that the show sinks into.

Gauahar Khan and Arjan Bajwa, playing characters that are no less significant, also suffer the consequences of narrative inconsistencies. The angularities of the adwoman and the writer and the rapport, or rather the lack of it, between the two constitute important plot elements but, despite the actors doing their best, these do not evolve into something that could bolster the series.

Does Mithun Chakraborty succeed in keeping Bestseller on the boil? Well, not quite. The ageing cop has a story to tell but the details that are put forth in the process of building the essential contours of the character are way too sketchy and arbitrary to add up to a cohesive whole.

But more than the facile characterisations, what undermines Bestseller are the holes that the mystery story is riddled with. In fact, there is little mystery going around in the show because one of the prime suspects is always hidden in plain sight and does nothing to keep the audience guessing.

As a clear reflection of the times that we live in, Bestseller shies away from naming Varanasi. The place has a significant role in the story but it goes by a fictional name. It is easy to see why. The fear of a backlash from conservative quarters stalks the show. A timid disposition such as the one on display here does no justice to the spirit of the iconoclastic mystic-poet who is repeatedly invoked in Bestseller.

Not to worry, Mussoorie, Kanatal and Neemrana make it into the plot as the places that they really are on the map. They retain their names. Poor old Mussoorie! It does not count for enough to offend anybody even if it is perchance shown in 'poor light'.

Although the body count in Bestseller isn't insignificant and there is ample talk of violence, nobody is actually murdered in cold blood. At least two of the key characters speak the same line - I am not a killer - ad nauseum. The show isn't either.

Verdict: Bestseller, eight chapters of unmitigated ennui, isn't the streaming equivalent of a racy, engrossing bestseller.