We’ve Never Seen Anything Like This News24 –

SonyLIV’s crime drama Black, White & Gray is more commendable for what it attempts to do than what it actually achieves. This is not to say, the series slips up in execution, or trips up on its cleverness. The best part of ingesting this 6-episode series is that its audacious format actually works, and works swimmingly, dragging us along, not unwillingly I might add, into the realm of a crime so bloodcurdling and unbrushed, it feels a hundred percent authentic, although, and here comes the catch, it is not.

This pantomime of the true-life crime format and a recreation of the crime as if the docu-drama was being fictionalized when in fact both the formats are fictional, is unique to the Indian digital platform. Happily, the dual-fiction format (with one pretending to be real footage) doesn’t obfuscate the plot which shines through its potentially complex formatting, gripping us, as it were, by our jowls and sweeping us along a trail of bloodshed with the two versions of the accused, the mock-real and the fictional, played by Mayur More/Sanjay Kumar Sahu, giving perspective to what is fundamentally an unresolved conundrum.

The inherent danger of this dual-formatting strategy tripping over its own cleverness, is miraculously averted. What we see is the murky curtain being gradually lifted from the crime, to reveal what IS rather than what SEEMS. Writer-director Pushkar Sunil Mahabal gives an intriguing spin to what could easily have been a gimmicky storytelling. And let’s not beat around the bush, there are most definitely some major gaps in the storytelling. For instance, why was the Malayali cab driver Sunny (Hakkim Shahjahan) killed? Was there any need to bump off the characters just because he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time?

The performances go a long way in conferring a heightened credibility to the proceedings. Tigmanshu Dhulia as a temporarily blinded cop Chauhan caught up in a thumbed ride that costs him his life, plays his role with so much self-assurance he feels like a victim determined to get promoted to the other side. Some of the twists in the plot, for example the dead leading lady (Palak Jaiswal) suddenly coming alive as though she had fallen asleep while watching Crime Patrol on her phone, is plainly outlandish.

The pulsating expedient plot chases down the improbabilities in the pursuit of audience’s undivided attention. The series gets it, without trying too hard, or stumbling in the pursuit of a daringly untrodden storytelling format. I came away from Black White & Gray applauding its determination to keep the goings-on unimpeachably alert. I did not roll my eyes at the show’s title secreting the name of the foreign correspondent who unravels the layers of deceit in the accused’s ‘serial-killer’ tag.

My favourite is Episode 5 which has the strongest visual appeal (Saee Bhope’s cinematography is constantly probing and fetching) and the maximum silences. The background music contains chunks of the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’. But the series otherwise remains true to itself, as it is meant to be.SonyLIV’s crime drama Black, White & Gray is more commendable for what it attempts to do than what it actually achieves. This is not to say, the series slips up in execution, or trips up on its cleverness. The best part of ingesting this 6-episode series is that its audacious format actually works, and works swimmingly, dragging us along, not unwillingly I might add, into the realm of a crime so bloodcurdling and unbrushed, it feels a hundred percent authentic, although, and here comes the catch, it is not.

This pantomime of the true-life crime format and a recreation of the crime as if the docu-drama was being fictionalized when in fact both the formats are fictional, is unique to the Indian digital platform. Happily, the dual-fiction format (with one pretending to be real footage) doesn’t obfuscate the plot which shines through its potentially complex formatting, gripping us, as it were, by our jowls and sweeping us along a trail of bloodshed with the two versions of the accused, the mock-real and the fictional, played by Mayur More/Sanjay Kumar Sahu, giving perspective to what is fundamentally an unresolved conundrum.

The inherent danger of this dual-formatting strategy tripping over its own cleverness, is miraculously averted. What we see is the murky curtain being gradually lifted from the crime, to reveal what IS rather than what SEEMS.

Writer-director Pushkar Sunil Mahabal gives an intriguing spin to what could easily have been a gimmicky storytelling. And let’s not beat around the bush, there are most definitely some major gaps in the storytelling. For instance, why was the Malayali cab driver Sunny (Hakkim Shahjahan) killed? Was there any need to bump off the characters just because he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? The performances go a long way in conferring a heightened credibility to the proceedings. Tigmanshu Dhulia as a temporarily blinded cop Chauhan caught up in a thumbed ride that costs him his life, plays his role with so much self-assurance he feels like a victim determined to get promoted to the other side.

Some of the twists in the plot, for example the dead leading lady (Palak Jaiswal) suddenly coming alive as though she had fallen asleep while watching Crime Patrol on her phone, is plainly outlandish.

The pulsating expedient plot chases down the improbabilities in the pursuit of audience’s undivided attention. The series gets it, without trying too hard, or stumbling in the pursuit of a daringly untrodden storytelling format.

I came away from Black White & Gray applauding its determination to keep the goings-on unimpeachably alert. I did not roll my eyes at the show’s title secreting the name of the foreign correspondent who unravels the layers of deceit in the accused’s ‘serial-killer’ tag. My favourite is Episode 5 which has the strongest visual appeal (Saee Bhope’s cinematography is constantly probing and fetching) and the maximum silences. The background music contains chunks of the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’. But the series otherwise remains true to itself, as it is meant to be.