Review On Delhi Crime Series

The series begins with a ground-breaking voiceover portraying Delhi as a grossly under-policed metropolis with more than half of the force assigned to traffic or VIP protection. It finishes by alluding to the fact that this was “a crime that brought the city to its knees.” The narration is borderline hard-boiled, and most of Vartika’s dialogue is similarly turgid, which led me to believe Delhi Crime Story was an Indian noir. It’s a possibility that I wholeheartedly supported, but one that did not materialize.

Delhi Crime Story is one of those extended procedurals that Peak TV and streaming have spawned and permitted, in the same character-driven style as The Killing or Seven Seconds, but without the intricacy of those characters. The first two episodes almost entirely devoted to creating a crew and initiating the process of tracking down the crime-scene bus feature the most of the series’ most heavy-handed character beats. Vartika, for instance, has an adolescent daughter who is desperate to escape to Canada, thinking that India is a wasteland. Vartika takes it upon herself to convince her daughter to stay, a task made more difficult by the series’ core crime, which garners immediate media attention and misinformation. And Neeti goes on a date in anticipation of an arranged marriage, the kind of event that introduces the subject of gender norms and relational power dynamics among contemporary Indian youth. Nothing about these individuals is introduced that isn’t relevant to Mehta’s larger conceptual concerns, and any speech that isn’t pertinent thuds slightly.

There just isn’t time for jokes or digressions when it would be more beneficial to demonstrate the intricate structure of the Delhi judicial system to viewers. This is when Mehta’s focus on exposition takes a lighter tone, which is perhaps for the best. Vartika is forced to handpick a motley squad of cops and detectives she knows she can trust in order to keep the case out of the quagmire of Delhi’s bureaucracy, which has an element of The Wire about it. Two episodes are insufficient for most of those investigators to create even the tiniest impression as persons, though I believe I’ve classified them as “harmfully inept” or “perhaps effective.” Almost every piece of incremental advancement necessitates either cashing in on existing favors or incurring new ones. Rather of being presented as corruption, the city’s convolutions are presented via the prism of entrenched classism and misogyny, as well as an assortment of isms that would never be discussed on a Law & Order or NCIS episode.

The series has the air of the work of a true stranger rather than an indigenous piece of representation. Or perhaps it simply feels as if it’s being constructed for outsiders? The “Delhi is packed!” technique would be familiar to anyone who has seen a locally shot film or an episode of The Amazing Race set in Delhi. Nonetheless, Mehta and cameraman Johan Huerlin Aidt’s approach to the city is hardly stereotyped. Everything in the first two episodes is centered on traffic, which is how the series conveys Delhi’s density, urgency, and central crime. Traffic serves as a conduit for exposure to Delhi’s geography, its frenetic rhythms, and the physical and metaphorical divides between people and communities.

Whether interrogating a cagey suspect, confronting a harsh authority figure, or engaging in push-and-pull with political and media personalities, everything in Delhi Crime Story seems familiar yet different. Add the visceral impact of the horrific crime the need for resolution is motivated by anger, not a mystery, and some intricate and precise variants on cell-signal tracing, CCTV monitoring, and other standard procedural beats, and you have an above-average genre exercise.