Crime Beat Review
Image credits: NDTV
The Zee5 series Crime Beat is a significant addition to the small canon of Indian media industry dramas, based on a book written by a journalist who was in the thick of the action that forms the core of the series. The show is marked by realism, an attribute that stems from its abjuration of overt generic flourishes. The dialogues co-written by the author of the novel contribute conversational authenticity to the show.
Crime Beat investigates the Delhi underworld, the media's attritional brushes with it and with men in uniform charged with keeping crime in check in the city. The lines that separate the three domains from each other as well as from party politics are frequently blurred, even erased. The show centres on a young man who arrives in Delhi from Varanasi to try and make it as a crime reporter. In a cutthroat world, he has to negotiate with a cynical chief of the news bureau, reckon with two police officers grappling with professional and personal issues of their own and confront a crime lord whose political ambition draws him out of exile and pull off high-profile kidnappings.
The pace tends to flag in some passages of the eight-episode series but the occasional meanderings of Crime Beat are not entirely wasted. The fluctuating arc approximates the unsteady progress of the protagonist, Abhishek Sinha. Crime Beat is a probing character study that encompasses the larger world that the protagonist navigates all in a day's work. The show makes a stray reference to the Uphaar Cinema fire of 1997, but its action is located years later, in the aftermath of the 2010 Commonwealth Games and during the 2011 ICC World Cup.
Crime Beat explores the venomous links between manipulative politicians and law-breakers who appear to operate with impunity. The focus of the series is, however, primarily on a young journalist's perilous learning curve that is dotted with dangerous detours. It also examines the conflicting dynamics of privilege and power, small town and big city, ambition and betrayal, and ethics and compromises, seen through the prism of the functioning of the media and fast eroding sheen. The show features a talented cast, including Saqib Saleem, Rahul Bhat, Rajesh Tailang, Danish Husain, Saba Azad, and Sai Tamhankar, who deliver impressive performances that bring depth and nuance to the story.
Some of the notable releases in the same genre include:
- Scoop
- The Broken News
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