It is the season for Indian spy thrillers. While Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff face off in War at a theatre near you, on Amazon (September 20) there is the excellent The Family Man with Raj Nidimoru and Krishna D.K. bringing their quirky sensibility to this story of an intelligence agent (Manoj Bajpayee, brilliant) who has to save the world while also dealing with scary principals in his daughter’s school.
A week later, on September 27, came Bard of Blood on Netflix. Based on Bilal Siddiqi’s 2015 spy thriller, The Bard of Blood , the show tells the story of a disgraced intelligence agent, Kabir Anand, who gets back in the field to rescue agents captured by the Taliban.
One of the best things about adapting Indian English novels for streaming platforms is the solving of the language conundrum. It is difficult to imagine Ganesh Gaitonde talking in Vikram Chandra’s liquid prose. Hearing him talk in Mumbaiyya in Sacred Games sounds right and proper. If and when Anita Nair’s Bengaluru-based police procedurals are adapted for the screen, it will be nice to hear Inspector Gowda berate some unfortunate in Kannada.
But, the only good thing about Bard of Blood is the language. The characters speak a comfortable mix of Hindi and English much like most urban Indians. There is also Urdu and Pashto, which is a pleasure to listen to.
With a name like Bard of Blood , and each chapter name a line from Shakespeare, (“When Sorrows Come, They Come Not Single Spies, but in Battalion") one would have imagined Shakespeare being an important part of the proceedings. Alas, it is the letter and not the spirit. So you have Kabir teaching Shakespeare in school... and when a student says Shakespeare puts him to sleep, do not expect a deconstruction of our education system; the boy is speaking from a position of privilege.
- Episodes: 7
- Seasons: 1
- Run time: 41 to 50 minutes each episode
- Starring: Emraan Hashmi, Vineet Kumar Singh, Sobhita Dhulipala, Kirti Kulhari, Jaideep Ahlawat, Shamaun Ahmed
- Director: Ribhu Dasgupta
The shallow manner in which complex issues are dealt with, is just one of the problems with the show. The fraught geo-political tensions of the region are reduced to single lines. Directed by Ribhu Dasgupta, and produced by Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, Bard of Blood is a choppy, shoddy affair.
There is no intelligence in this ham-fisted show, which abounds in stereotypes. Here is the angst-driven agent. There is the spy master who was like a father to the agent, but then there was a falling out. There is also a bureaucratic bean counter, the feisty patriot, the grand patriarch leading the people to the promised land and the young boy dealing with the burden of legacy and the helpful nerd.
There is a Clarisse Starling ( Silence of the Lambs )-type newbie who is a brilliant analyst. Her applications for missions are routinely dismissed. Seeing her work on the field, you cannot blame the powers that be for hesitating to grant her mission control. The bad guys and, for that matter, the good guys are all painted in broad strokes with no thought for nuance or shades.
There is no sense of urgency, as the agents seem to be running all over the stark desert sands of Baluchistan where they can be seen a mile off... but the bullets miraculously miss the good guys while unerringly finding the wicked.
Acting-wise, Emraan Hashmi has one expression for Kabir, while Sobhita Dhulipala as Isha looks busy and worried by turns while serving tea or comforting Kabir. If that is not stereotyping, then I do not know what is! Vineet Kumar Singh as Veer Singh, has an interesting arc as the forgotten agent deep undercover with heroin smugglers in Afghanistan. He looked so long into the abyss that the abyss stared back at him.
Bard of Blood has nothing going for it — neither thrills, action or humour. How we miss “Battery Aziz!”
