Dabba Cartel is far from nourishing!

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For starters (and I don’t mean the edible variety here, as we might think from the show’s title!), I did not like this avatar of Shabana Azmi at all. Shabana has a knack of shining in every role irrespective of length or importance. But she is decidedly uncomfortable here in an inconsistent character that cannot decided whether (and when) to be meek or forceful. As Sheila a.k.a. Kashi, the mainstay of this story on a ‘gang’ of women that delivers narcotics in dabbas (Mumbai’s name for workplace-delivered lunchboxes), she just does not convey the dramatic or emotional force that is her signature in every work.

The plot is simple: owing to many causes, Sheila and associates, including daughter-in-law Raji (Shalini Pandey), an ex-maid, Mala (Nimisha Sajayan) and real estate broker Shahida (Anjali Anand) are carrying on this business successfully.

But greed has no limit and so things spiral out of control, including direct or indirect involvement with a pharma company head, Shankar (Jisshu Sengupta), an unscrupulous man peddling a dangerous drug, an honest drug-monitoring agency’s officer Pathak (Gajraj Rao), a drug dealer, Chavan (Sandesh Kulkarni), whose legal front is a driving school, Preeti (Sai Tamhankar)who is  a cop working in tandem with Pathak, and Shankar’s loyal lieutenant, Hari (Bhupendra Jadawat). Then there is the pesky Tejaswi (Sushmita Mukherjee) from the neighborhood, and Sheila’s childhood friend, Moushami (Lilette Dubey) who works for drug lord Chacko (Sunil Grover).

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The basic story may be interesting, but the creators and writers make the series languorously lengthy and often repetitive. The cusswords are mercifully scant (a web series compulsion also common to Excel Entertainment) and there is nothing by way of skin show, but yet (that word repeated any number of times!) a needless homosexual angle is brought in without a real need between Preeti and Shahida, who are thus lovers on opposite sides of the law.

The dysfunctional marriage angle between Shankar and his wife, Varuna (Jyothika), who has to join the drug gang that includes her disgruntled ex-maid, and the fact that Hari is also Raji’s husband and Sheila’s son make the convenient coincidences complete and the revelation about Moushami in the end gives a twist that is unexpected. The proceedings almost make the series a dark comedy, but we have none of the excellence of the landmark OTT ventures in the genre, such as Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo and some others.

The technical values are upscale, and the performances range from consummate (Nimisha Sajayan, Anjali Anand, Sandesh Kulkarni, Jisshu Sengupta, Sunil Grover) to average (most of the other cast). Sai Tamhankar and Gajraj Rao are saddled with the weakest-developed characters of their career and do what they can to salvage that, just like Shabana Azmi! Santanu Ghatak, as Bhowmik, Shankar’s ex-employee, is, however, exceptional.

This is a decided and surprising downer from Excel.

Rating: **1/2 (Just about)Netflix presents Excel Entertainment’s Dabba Cartel Created by: Shibani Dandekar Akhtar, Vishnu Menon, Gaurav Kapur & Akanksha Seda Produced by: Ritesh Sidhwani & Farhan Akhtar Directed by: Hitesh Bhatia Written by: Shibani Akhtar, Asad Hussain, Gaurav Kapoor, Bhavna Kher, Vishnu Menon & Akanksha Seda  Starring: Shabana Azmi, Jyothika, Nimisha Sajayan, Shalini Pandey, Anjali Anand, Sai Tamhankar, Jisshu Sengupta, Gajraj Rao, Sandesh Kulkarni, Bhupendra Jadawat, Sushmita Mukherjee, Lillete Dubey, Santanu Ghatak, Arshia Verma & others    

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