With Kay Kay Menon, Ranvir Shorey and Rasika Dugal, the JioCinema series has a great cast. Regardless, it’s ineffective and instantly forgettable.
Akhil Arora, a Film Critics Guild member and a Rotten Tomatoes-certified TV critic, who has watched all six episodes of Shekhar Home. He has been reviewing movies and TV series since 2015 and has written for NDTV and SlashFilm.
Early into Shekhar Home—the new mystery crime series on JioCinema—a middle-aged army doctor arrives as the new housemate at a guest house run by an elderly woman. As she shows him around the place, she apologises for the mess and the living area’s unkempt state on behalf of the other tenant. Shortly after, when the doctor makes the man’s acquaintance, he learns of his expert deduction skills. Taken aback, he remarks on his excellence. In response, the man with a keen eye for tiny details fires back: “No doctor, it’s elementary.” Yes, Shekhar Home is a Sherlock Holmes show and its beginning is a carbon copy of Sherlock’s start, the hit BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman from a decade-and-a-half ago.
Except no one is officially calling it an Indian remake of Sherlock. Created by Srijit Mukherji (Shabaash Mithu) and Aniruddha Guha (Rashmi Rocket), the JioCinema series claims to be inspired by the public domain works of Arthur Conan Doyle. But it’s evident that it’s massively inspired—and based on—Sherlock. BBC Studios’ involvement is the most visible sign that Shekhar Home is essentially the Indian Sherlock. We’ve been here before with prior BBC Studios India productions. Clearly, they are happy for Shekhar Home to ape the original’s structure beat for beat. Even exact lines are copied word for word, in some instances. It even adapts some of the same Doyle short stories as Sherlock.
The direction is the biggest issue in Shekhar Home
The six episodes span five cases—“A Study in Scarlet”, “A Scandal in Bohemia”, and “The Hound of the Baskervilles” are among the inspirations. The supernatural nature of the last of them allows Shekhar Home to play into superstition, Indian folk tales, and other horror stuff. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the first three episodes which are humdrum on a detective level. The season finale pushes the show into puzzle and crack-the-code territory. But the writing isn’t as much of an issue as everything around it.
The direction—Mukherji handles the first four episodes and Rohan Sippy takes over for the final two—is the biggest hurdle. Despite having actors like Kay Kay Menon, Ranvir Shorey and Rasika Dugal, sometimes in the same scene, Shekhar Home is unable to hold your attention and deliver a worthwhile dish out of its ingredients. (Shorey’s acting is too on the nose at times. Dugal is, as always, a highlight and livens up whatever you put her in.)
The four episodes devoted to individual cases never really pull you into its world. Scenes are lacklustre—the cinematography by Sirsha Ray and Shanu Singh Rajput is repeatedly found wanting—and the action bits aren’t as thrilling as they ought to be. More often than not, the JioCinema series merely stumbles from plot point to plot point. It’s crying out for a steadier hand and more of a deft touch. What we get instead is amateurish work coupled with ineffective writing. Even with the inbuilt power of Doyle’s short stories, Shekhar Home ends up as an instantly forgettable adaptation.
Transporting Sherlock Holmes to ‘90s West Bengal
Primarily set in 1993—save for a flashback to Calcutta late into the season—Shekhar Home follows its titular detective (Menon) as he makes a nearly off-grid living in the fictional West Bengal small town of Lonpur. (London, Lonpur, get it?) While Sherlock had its protagonist in the busy, bustling crime-filled streets of a major town, Shekhar Home makes the curious choice of isolating him. His landlord, Mrs. “H” Hendricks (Shernaz Patel), isn’t exactly fond of him given he’s frequently behind on his rent. (Curiously, her home address isn’t modelled on 221B Baker Street. Instead, it’s an in-your-face Casablanca reference. Why?) But that soon changes when Jayavrat Saini (Shorey)—a retired army doctor—shows up as the second tenant and inadvertently becomes Shekhar’s unwitting assistant.
Shekhar Home’s take on Sherlock Holmes also borrows from the protagonist of Poker Face. Apart from being a fearsome detective and forensic expert, he labels himself a human lie detector. Menon also gives his Sherlock a couple of quirks. He does an odd chuckle when he’s onto something or when he cracks a joke he thinks is funny. And he puts his index finger to his lips when he’s thinking like he’s trying to quieten the noise around him and in his brain.
While Shekhar and Jayavrat are solving cases in Lonpur, the episodes also hint at another character with the initial M—evidently a take on Sherlock’s archenemy Jim Moriarty—who is keeping an eye on both and seems to have plans of their own. As the show progresses, Shekhar Home introduces the show’s version of Mycroft Holmes and Irene Adler. Mrinmoy (Kaushik Sen), Shekhar’s brother who works in intelligence, arrives with a case in one episode. That episode also brings in Iraboty Adhyo (Dugal), a woman who also has deductive powers like Shekhar. Her introduction is possibly the best scene in the JioCinema series and Dugal deserves the credit for it. You can tell Shekhar is obsessed with her even though he may not admit it.
Shekhar Home wastes its momentum and female characters
But the rest of Shekhar Home cannot live up to her. Even in the fifth episode, when the show ought to be going full steam as it races to its conclusion, a flashback to Shekhar’s forensic science teaching days at Calcutta Medical College finds him observing minute details on the faces or clothes of his students. Why is this required in the penultimate episode? Like, haven’t we already learnt all of this about him? It almost feels like a second start to Shekhar Home, as if these moments were originally in another order before the episodes were re-edited and reorganised. That’s also the only way to explain why the soundtrack and multiple scenes hint that there might be more to someone’s character, even though we already know the truth about them.
Elsewhere, the JioCinema series apes Sherlock Holmes symbols without ever establishing them. They might be classical touchpoints, but they have no valid presence here. There’s no truth or grounding to it. They exist because the creators are excited to play with Sherlock’s toys but don’t really know how to craft a tale of intrigue.
Kirti Kulhari, introduced late into the season after a couple of brief glimpses, is wasted. Dugal’s Iraboty is shown as super smart and capable when she’s introduced. But she then fades into the background in the next episode even though she brings the case to Shekhar. Why is she not actively involved in helping solve it? She’s treated as an unacknowledged love interest basically.
For what it’s worth, the pacing picks up in the final two episodes and a big character reveal sets up a cliffhanger ending in the season finale. But the path to it is disappointing, to say the least. Given the one-case-per-episode template, any Sherlock Holmes TV adaptation is only as good as its episodes. More than the case and where the investigation goes, it’s the exchanges between the characters that are all important. It’s all about the journey. But the dynamics between Shekhar and Jayavrat, Mrs. Hendricks, or the show’s version of Inspector Lestrade don’t offer enough. As a result, the emotional beats don’t have the heft or wallop they desire. Ultimately, Shekhar Home is as uninspired as the show’s forced title.
All six episodes of Shekhar Home released on Wednesday, August 14 on JioCinema.
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