Criminal Justice S4: The Trial Feels Tired, & So Does Pankaj Tripathi

Criminal Justice Season 4: Pankaj Tripathi Politely Waddles Through Yet Another Lacklustre Chapter

Tripathi is tasked with unravelling another complex case with woke underpinnings, but despite stellar new additions to the acting entree, the main course remains dull and tasteless, writes Manik Sharma .

“HE IS THE FLUKE ARTIST OF THE CENTURY," an experienced lawyer declares about the ace at the heart of the Criminal Justice franchise. In a rare feat of longevity and perhaps evidence of irony, one of Hotstar’s most renowned adaptations of a foreign franchise has, in some ways, outlasted the platform it arrived on. Hotstar has now become JioHotstar, since the merger of two streaming behemoths, but Pankaj Tripathi ’s Madhav Mishra is still caught in a tame web of complex cases, knotty sub-plots, lies, deception and of course an infuriating post-mortem of India’s judicial underbelly. As much as Mishra’s own career is termed a fluke, the fact that this show continues to middle the ball with deadpan energy and lacklustre intent is testament to both its staying power and the inability of a creative room to evolve. The latter seems to matter less. To which effect, Criminal Justice: A Family Matter (ie season 4) is watchable, but hardly memorable.

Raj, a popular surgeon played by the underutilised Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, leads a complicated life. He lives with his wife Anju, played by the quietly effective Surveen Chawla (who is owed a better hand by the streaming space) and his special-needs daughter Ira. One morning, Raj is found by his maid holding a bloodied woman to his chest. It’s not Anju, but his neighbour and mistress, Roshni, played by the graceful and broody Asha Negi. The embrace is warm, Raj’s crime writ large on his hanging face. Much like the rest of this franchise, it initially feels like an open-and-shut case — a literal snapshot, if you will. But that’s the trick Criminal Justice often pulls: it lures you with simplicity, only to lead you down winding trails in search of the cracks in the story.

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Off the bat, the show’s premise kicks the envelope with highbrow subjects: open marriage, difficult parenthood, and the city’s elite trying to eke humanity out of their privileged existences. Ayyub is a fine actor, but the high-heeled noose of wealth and elite snobbery around his neck feels uncomfortable. He is better off at summoning empathy in the heart of the onlooker. Something that actor Vikrant Massey found the perfect pitch of in the show’s first season. It’s instead Chawla’s tightrope act as the woman awkwardly witnessing her partner’s transgressions, that pulls this season forward. Hers is a precarious position — mother of an ailing child, wife of a reckless husband and the gentle sleight of hand that lifts gloom, doom and everything in between. Until she no longer can.

But while Criminal Justice continues to introduce good actors by way of new cases, the show still revolves around the whimsy of Mishra’s world. His approach to cases is perforated with spoonfuls of sugary outtakes about life, law and everything in between. He isn’t a lawyer, as much as he is the court jester — a reluctant, rough-edged outsider who simply can’t take himself, or the world around him, too seriously. In one scene, his staff — he can afford a sizeable supporting cast of stooges now — enacts the crime with a degree of casualness befitting a college skit. But that’s the thing about Mishra’s lightness of being, his innocence, his view of the world and the softness with which he makes the most incestuous, grating diets feel palatable to the fragile stomach. It’s a role that was made for Pankaj Tripathi, and it’s the one that also seems to have dulled him into a state of autopilot. The kind that allows him to be him, and nothing else.

Here are some of Pankaj Tripathi's iconic movies to binge-watch on OTTplay Premium.

Directed by Rohan Sippy, Criminal Justice has this stench of soap-opera writing and direction that prevents it from becoming anything other than a twisty, late-night guilt trip. Most of the sleuthing is done at the pitch of TV. Wide-eyed cops discuss evidence and case details with the sleaze of a gossip column. The production feels dated, rarely escaping the shackles of studio lots and cramped office rooms to take in the country, its chaotic, unsettling streets that smirk with the taste of its inefficiencies. The court is where the country meets in hope. But its slide into hopelessness begins elsewhere. The persistent focus on the elite amplifies the stakes, but it also reduces the show to little more than the bickering of the bold and the beautiful. This season might just have placed that cherry on top.

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Criminal Justice is a watchable franchise — anything with Tripathi in it would be — with a generous serving of Tripathi-isms. That incredibly polite exterior of a man, you feel, is carrying greater depths than he is ever allowed to deliver or exfoliate. But all that complexity has been waived out of the chambers, as a plodding series continues to saddle its generational star with more-of-the-same-ism. Likeness, a bit like likeability, can be a death-knell for creativity. Tripathi, we know, can pivot sideways, but Criminal Justice is stuck in a repetitive spin cycle where all it can do is arrange for a change of clothing. The tenacity, innovation and courage required to alter the fabric altogether are, and will likely remain, amiss. The pieces are there, but this show only wants to keep arranging them in the same, tiresome pattern of self-recognition.

Criminal Justice Family Matters is now streaming on JioHotstar.

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