Twists Without Teeth: Why Madhuri Dixit’s Mrs Deshpande Never Quite Lands

IT'S NOT EVERY DAY that Madhuri Dixit plays a serial killer, but one thinks she knows this fact, too. Perhaps that might explain why the legendary actress decided she was going to sport a creepy half-smile throughout her latest series, Nagesh Kukunoor’s Mrs Deshpande. Perhaps she was inspired by Dexter or Hannibal, but the series itself ultimately has nothing in common with these two, despite having a rather interesting premise. With red herrings abound, and twists that you perhaps won’t see coming (one of the better aspects of the show), Mrs Deshpande is strictly a middling affair.

A serial killer within a serial-killer story, Dixit plays Seema Deshpande, who’s in Hyderabad jail for a series of murders she committed 25 years ago. We see her doing yoga every day and cooking food for all the inmates. She’s the resident maushi, clearly. In current-day Mumbai, a fresh new set of murders happens that mimic the same murders from back in the day, and so the police reach out to Mrs Deshpande for her help in understanding the motive and modus operandi of the new culprit.

As is wont for a genre like this, nothing is really what it seems in the beginning. Why Mrs Deshpande carried out the murders from 25 years ago stays a mystery till the very last episode, and by the time you get there, you’d have crossed a maze of twists and turns. Don’t even bother making predictions because you most likely won’t be able to crack it. That’s only because there are no hints dropped about what the outcome could be. The six-part series uses every episode to explore a red herring, only to abandon it completely, and not-so-swiftly move on to the next. Having said that, I didn’t see a lot of the twists coming, so the intrigue factor is high. You will try to finish the series to get to the end, which is something, I guess?

Madhuri seems a bit contrived, and there’s no diplomatic way to say this. It’s like there is a running commentary in her head that she has to seem menacing, and she chose a half-smile as the way to do it. The police seem to be taking many leaps of faith with her (which seems slightly out of character for Mumbai police), whether it's the commissioner, Arun (Priyanshu Chatterjee) or an officer in charge of the case, Tejas (Siddharth Chandekar). The gasp-inducing twists also make it seem like everything in the narrative is rushed so we can get to the final episode and land one last sensationalist reveal. Usually, when you’re unable to come to a conclusion in a murder-mystery or thriller, it’s a good thing, but in Mrs Deshpande, it speaks to how much the audience is taken for granted.

Madhuri Dixit on her serial killer role in Mrs Deshpande: 'Character with a lot of layers. She's like an onion...'

We’re at a point in the content watching ecosystem where you can cringe binge a “bad” show or brain rot with something low stakes, but a show with a good premise and promise, that ends up letting you down, can be far more frustrating. I kept waiting for the story to get better, deeper, richer, more high-stakes politics, but with every episode, Mrs Deshpande chooses lazy and instant gratification. To her credit, Madhuri Dixit tries hard, and some action sequences are well-executed, but I couldn’t shake off the fact that something was inherently missing. Perhaps this is what happens when you put too many eggs into the celebrity basket.

Mrs Deshpande assumes brisk cleverness can be a good replacement for substance. You finish the series with no thoughts, just a dull feeling that you’ve been hustled. This isn’t slow-burning in the least; it’s a flicker that never fully becomes a flame. No amount of stardom can cover up a show that refuses to do the hard work of earning its edginess.

Mrs Deshpande is currently streaming on JioHotstar, now available with your OTTplay Premium subscription. Watch the series here.