Politics in films and television shows has been a constant since Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” was released in 1940. According to Detroit Film Theatre director Elliot Wilhelm, “Since then, the political storylines that make for the best movies are often the ones focused on corruption and the unethical use of power to get to the top.”
It is also said that stories about corruption will always be a part of great drama because there are great artists and then there’s great corruption. Pure crime stories are about people who don’t feel anything, have no remorse or don’t have any stake for what they’re doing can be relatively uninteresting so a premise for committing that crime makes a good story. The Godfather for instance chronicles the history of organised crime in America which is made not only interesting but really important to our own personal lives by showing us one family that’s in this business — the business of denial, deceit, murder, loving dear ones and the toll that it takes on them.
Crime series almost always make prime time viewing because they provide significant understanding of the rhetoric of crime and law enforcement in society. Much has been said about crime shows and the extent and intensity of public fear and alarm these raise about crime, and the effects of violence and gore in them, but their appeal to audiences worldwide is huge as these are related to a wider social and political agenda. Contemporary culture, hence, is all about tightly interwoven social theory, social psychology, cultural and media studies, narrative theory, crime and law enforcement, and when that is depicted truthfully, it becomes a hit.
Let’s zoom into the political-crime drama series that we are going to talk about here and why this genre particularly appeals to me. CAT [named after a colloquialism coined in 1986 by police officers in Amritsar, India, in the context of pseudo-terrorist gangs that were formed to help locate real terrorist gangs] has got rave reviews and is one of the best Indian Punjabi crime/political thriller series that Netflix had to offer this year. It illuminates how convoluted politics in a massive country like India is and how corrupt government and law enforcement officials can be. Why India? Well, because we don’t do homemade stuff that depicts things the way they are. We brush things under the carpet, we live with elephants in the room and we don’t like to open Pandora’s boxes. Enough idioms for today, and that is an entirely different story for another day.
Much as we may not like to admit it, India and Pakistan are quite similar in their socio-political environment and since things run quite in the same way in the subcontinent ,one can easily relate to the political shenanigans, the election backdrop, institutional corruption, complicit cops, oppression of marginalised groups, public issues, corrupt government officials and political leaders, and their nexus with equally corrupt police, the drug mafia, and how innocent lives suffer at the hands of the evil circus that they all put up together. Therefore, packed with endless and airtight suspense and thrill, shows like CAT widen my perspective about the sociopolitical environment I live in — quod ella demonstrandum as Mr Fernandes, my math school teacher would say after coming to a mathematical solution.
We grew up on the depiction of Punjab with muttiyars [village belles] cavorting in mustard fields, bringing saag-roti to their loving fathers and hardworking brothers or dancing with their gandaasa toting beaus. Contemporary writers and directors, however, have discovered that there is more to Punjab than balle balle and bhangra.
In the eight episodes of CAT, writer-director Balwinder Singh Janjua tells a murky tale of a Punjab scarred by insurgency and drug menace. If you understand Punjabi, the series will pour out to you like honey, otherwise, you will have to make do with subtitles, but the story is so powerful and penetrating that you will still be tempted to binge-watch in one go.
Set in 1990, in Sialgarh in Indian Punjab, this is the story of Gurnam Singh, played by Randeep Hooda, the hunky kidnapper in Alia Bhatt’s Highway and Salman Khan’s hot-hot trainer in Sultan. Hooda as the soft-spoken, deep and vulnerable Gurnam has proved his mettle and created a new space for himself as an actor.
As a teenager, Gurnam Singh was Gary [played by Abhishant Rana whose nuanced performance set the pace for Randeep Hooda to portray the grown-up Gurnam], a young informant or CAT working for the Punjab police. Gary not only infiltrated a terrorist gang that killed his parents, but he also helped the police bring the gang down during a weapons deal. The police in return provide a new identity and a safe home for his little brother and sister.
Sixteen years later, it is 2006, and Gurnam works as a motor mechanic. His sister is married and settled in Canada, but his younger brother Sunny (Danish Sood) lives with him and is quite a pain because instead of studying conscientiously in college because his elder brother has raised him like a mother, Sunny gets involved with a girl who is way smarter than him who in turn gets him involved in drugs and this is when trouble really starts for Gurnam.
It is election year, the police are under pressure to crack down on drugs, and Madam Aulakh (Geeta Agrawal), one of the candidates for becoming a minister, promises to make Punjab drug free if she’s elected. Ironically, she is the local drug kingpin and solely responsible for drug menace in the region. In comes the two-faced inspector Sehtab Singh played by Suvinder Vicky [the compelling lead actor in Netflix's Kohrra] who agrees to Aulakh’s offer for using one of her [best but now disposable] dealers for a drug bust, but Sehtab has plans of his own.
Since Sehtab was the one to help reset Gurnam’s life previously, he approaches his old police contact in desperation to get his younger brother Sunny out of the mega mess that he gets himself into. Sehtab who is about to retire, cuts a deal with Aulakh’s opponent to bring her down and replace him as the powerful powder king. Finding Gurnam in a vulnerable position, Sehtab promises to have charges against Sunny dropped but only if Gurnam would agree to penetrate and bust Aulakh’s operation as CAT.
Gurnam goes undercover but in doing so, he confronts the darkness of his murky past. There are gory scenes, thankfully in black and white, where he had helped Sehtab and the police bring down terrorist cells rife in Punjab. Despite having worked hard for over a decade Gurnam has built a life away from his past but it all comes back to torment him.
From being a loyal person who is clueless of being used as a pawn for Sehtab whose final dream is to bust a big case and fly off to Canada, to wrapping up the series as the bullet machine that wipes out most of the cast, Hooda delivers a consistent performance throughout the series in a role that shows both anguish and anger of the character.
It is intriguing to see Sehtab’s journey as an honorable police officer who has becomes bitter about how little it’s gotten him. Gurnam, an honest man himself, trusts him as the honest cop, having no idea that the cunning Sehtab is now working for Aulakh’s rival.
Shot over 80 different locations and not one single set, the series also explores a father and his cop daughter Babita [Hasleen Kaur] who belong to a marginalised community and both worship different gods in the same house. The daughter has converted because of discrimination against her in society.
Dressed conservatively in shalwar-kameez and dupatta covering her head, Madam Aulakh who lives in a palatial house with a gorgeous brat of a daughter is a vicious woman with a brutal past and is a very relatable character. Her past is marred by her typical, feudal womaniser husband who she smartly eradicates and then works her way to becoming a minister. Agarwal has given a fine performance in her layered character.
One of the best scenes [and there are so many] is where Gurnam and Babita who have feelings for each other despite their caste conflict, stand pointing guns at each other. It has no lines but is intense, perfectly timed and executed.
In weaving a narrative around the multi-hued backdrop of militancy and drugs in Punjab, and an ugly but plausible nexus between the police and politicians, and an intricate web around young people involved in guns, pop music and drugs, Janjua and co-writers Rupinder Chahal, Anil Rodhan and Jimmy Singh have brought to light social issues through credible characters and situations.
A note to the mushy-hearted that through the eight episodes that depict a world of violence and gore, the tone is set right in the beginning with lots of bullets and blood, brutally honest depiction of danger and deceit lurking round every corner. Towards the middle, the series loses its pace, but it ends on a cliffhanger that promises a second season.