Scoop Review: Karishma Tanna's Performance Is Without Blemish

The story of a tough and tenacious female journalist punished for her ambition and derring-do is deftly dramatized in Scoop, a based-on-true-events series that puts the Indian media and law enforcement agencies under a scanner.

Created by Hansal Mehta and Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul, the six-part Netflix show centres on a woman wronged. Woven around it is a wide-ranging depiction of how the media, the police, the law and the underworld operate, often in consonance, to corner anybody who dares to go ferreting for inconvenient truths.The daylight murder of a seasoned crime reporter, a malicious media trial of a younger scribe arrested for her alleged involvement in the killing and the machinations of the crime branch are the three principal strands of a story that seeks to expose, without going overboard, the sharp decline of Indian journalism in recent decades.

Director and showrunner Hansal Mehta informs the narrative with an acute sense of reality. The newsrooms that it plays out in, the passages and spaces in the police headquarters and the Mumbai crime branch, the grim innards of a women's prison where hierarchies are firmly enforced, and the courtroom where the drama culminates are all in the realm of the concrete and matter-of-fact.

As it pieces together a well-researched saga of a woman pushed to the backfoot and pilloried mercilessly, Scoop is at once specific and universal. It presents the struggles of a single mother and fiercely competitive media pro whose meteoric rise discomfits the men around her. It also carves out percipient portraits of two professions - journalism and policing - that are assailed by intense politicisation and vested interests.

Written by Mirat Trivedi and Mrunmayee Lagoo Waikul, Scoop is loosely based on journalist Jigna Vora's non-fiction book, Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison, which details the months that she spent in judicial custody as an undertrial. The series goes well beyond the published text. The show unfolds at a deliberate pace as it lays bare the dangers inherent in chasing the truth and taking on the might of the establishment.

The fictional rendition of the murder of veteran Mumbai investigative journalist Jyotirmoy Dey in June 2011 and the subsequent trial of Jigna Vora for alleged links with organised crime - the names of the key people are changed as are those of the dailies that they served - incorporates several other aspects of the story to shed light on the conditions that obtain in newsrooms, in the corridors of the police headquarters, and in jailhouses.

The core of the script centres on the career curve of the protagonist, Jagruti Pathak (Karishma Tanna), her fierce pursuit of stories, her repeated run-ins with rivals, jealous colleagues and contacts in the field and off it, and the shenanigans of the police officers she has to deal with on a daily basis in the line of duty and the wages of the news-gathering cycle that she is a part of.

Also of great importance to the plot are Jagruti Pathak's many personal and professional relationships. Estranged from an abusive husband and caught in a protracted and messy divorce case, she has to take care of her ten-year-old son Neel while holding on to a high-pressure job and making the most of it. Her grandfather and maternal uncle (Deven Bhojani) stand by her as she falls victim to a wilful collective conspiracy.

Other key characters in her orbit are Imran Siddiqui (Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub), her mentor and the editor-in-chief of the broadsheet where Jagruti is the deputy bureau chief; a senior rival Jaydeb Sen (Prosenjit Chatterjee in a special appearance); her primary source in the Mumbai police crime branch JCP Harshvardhan Shroff (Harman Baweja); Pushkar Mohan (Tanmay Dhanania), a colleague who is out to cut her down to size; and Leena Pradhan (Tannishtha Chatterjee), editorial chief of a competing Mumbai tabloid.

The script explores not only the systemic distortions that destroy Jagruti's successful career but also the gender dynamics that are at play as she navigates a world in which a strong, opinionated woman is instantly perceived as a threat that is to be scythed down at the first opportunity.

Pushkar Mohan, who believes that Jagruti's rapid ascent has been due to her proximity to her boss Imran, is dismissive of her work even as the doughty crime reporter yields no ground to him. But the same man does a volte-face and exhorts his wife (Ira Dubey) to "give them hell" when the latter faces discrimination at her workplace following a promotion she has earned at the expense of a male claimant to the post.

In what has become the hallmark of Hansal Mehta's directorial approach to stories derived from newspaper headlines, be it in films (Shahid, Omerta, Faraaz) or in web shows (Scam 1992), documented fact is mined for its multiple skeins without any of the detours undermining the crux of the tale.

Wending its way through its many sub-plots, Scoop stays focussed on the plight of a woman subjected to mud-slinging by her own fraternity and a police force under pressure to crack a particularly vexed case and find a scapegoat.

The performance on which Scoop rests - Karishma Tanna's - is without blemish. The arc that the lead actress traces serves to lend intensity to the emotional trajectory of the story to perfection.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, restraint personified, is brilliant as the man who serves as a sounding board for the heroine, a fact that is underlined most sharply in the course of televised verbal duel the character has with a rival editor on the current state of the business of news.

Among the supporting cast, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Tanmay Dhanania, Deven Bhojani and Harman Baweja all cash in on the even-toned quality of the narrative and deliver performances that enhance overall impact of the series.

Prosenjit Chatterjee, in a special appearance as the crime reporter who sparks the protagonist's troubles, makes his role count for much more than its length would suggest.

Incisive and insightful, Scoop is, in journalistic parlance, a fully cooked story - another triumph for a director at the top of his game.