Crime Beat is flaccid, pointless saga on gangster and scribes

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Based on the book, The Price You Pay, the series Crime Beat is a flaccid saga on journalistic ambitions and ethics. What happens when these collide with an investigative mission against a gangster named Binny Chaudhary (Rahul Bhat) and his femme fatale muse, nicknamed Heroine (Sai Tamhankar) is shown in a very lackluster manner.

Also involved are a cop with a skeleton in his closet, DCP Uday Kumar (Rajesh Tailang), a byline-obsessed editor (Danish Hussain), an ambitious rookie scribe, Maya (Saba Azad) and of course the Benares native, Abhishek Sinha (Saqib Saleem), another new scribe out to make headlines (literally, as in his byline in the newspapers) and prove his worth.

Alongside, we have a ruthless politician, S.K. Rawat (Vipin Sharma) with an agenda, and a dedicated police officer, ACP Mayank (Addinath Kothare), whose father was killed in a police-gangster shootout.

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With almost everyone of these having a secret up his or her sleeve, if not a skeleton in the closet, and an ambiguous angle to Binny, the script could have made this series riveting and gripping despite many such stories before with the crime-cop, cop-journalist or cop-crime-media angles. But what stands out in this 8-episode saga is the sheer pointlessness of the characters’ motivations, or their ambiguity again.

The title (of the book on which this show is based) may be apt in what comes across, but the saga remains silly in the final analysis, along with some needless coincidences, like that of Maya’s father (no spoilers for those who will visit this one!).

Sadly, after gripping fare like Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, this one comes across perhaps as worse than it is, but apart from a few decent performances (Kishore Kadam is Pashupati stands out, as does Rahul Bhat as Binny and Danish Husain as the obnoxious Amir Akhtar), there is really little to commend here.

Saqib Saleem is strictly alright as Abhishek, and also the normally excellent Sai Tamhankar is shockingly just okay. After her lesbian turn in the recent and equally vapid Dabba Cartel, there is a hint of that orientation here as well, and she really need not go into that zone twice in two months!! The normally-reliable Rajesh Tailang also does not seem comfortable, while Vipin Sharma is routine and predictable.

Overall, I would then rather revisit Khakee: The Bengal Chapter and weightier such material that is well-told, like The Broken News. For Content Film Productions, there is pretty little content in the real sense here.

Rating: **

ZEE5 presents Content Film Productions’ Crime Beat Showrunner: Sudhir Mishra  Produced by:Manju Ramesh Agarwal & Rajeev R. Agarwal  Directed by: Sudhir Mishra & Sanjeev Kaul Written by: Somnath Batabyal, Sudhir Mishra, Dilip Keshav Mukharaiya, Karan Rana & Ashwin Verman Music: Jpel Crasto  Starring: Saqib Saleem, Rahul Bhat, Sai Tamhankar, Kishore Kadam, Danish Husain, Rajesh Tailang, Saba Azad, Addinath Kothare, Breshna Khan Hamid, Vipin Sharma, Anil Dhawan & others

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