Series: Aarya; Cast: Sushmita Sen, Chandrachur Singh, Sikander Kher, Namit Das, Ankur Bhatia, Maya Sarao, Jayant Kripalani, Vikas Kumar, Alexx ONell, Manish Choudhary, Vishwajeet Pradhan; Created by: Ram Madhvani; Rating: * *

Aarya starts off with a couple of advantages. It marks the return of Sushmita Sen, a fact that has helped the show pump up hype over the past weeks. Secondly, there proven core content at hand. The show is based on the Dutch series Penoza, which saw a whopping run of five seasons, and which has already inspired an American rehash, Red Widow.
Both the advantages, however, come with a catch. There was always the challenge of molding the uber-glamour of Sushmita Sen — still India’s first Miss Universe in the minds of most — into a protagonist that fits the scope of a web series (it is a challenge that her Bollywood directors mostly never tried tackling, which often saw her essay the ‘other heroine’ in two-heroine projects).
On the second aspect, what worked in Dutch may not necessarily work for a ‘desi’ revisit.
It’s obvious right from the start that writer-creator Ram Madhvani’s primary labour over nine episodes lay in setting up a saleable, authorbacked showcase to highlight the Sushmita factor, with his Indianised imported plot.
Sushmita is Aarya Sareen, alpha mother of three, and she is hanging upside down defying gravity, executing a complex inversion workout, when we first meet her.
The scene is perhaps symbolic, meant to tell us how ‘in control’ she can be, when her world turns upside down.
Which doesn’t take long to happen actually. Beneath the veneer of a happy family, where Aarya wants to give her kids a normal childhood, we soon learn the Sareens are not ‘normal’ people.
The regal lifestyle owes itself to dealings more than meet the eye.
Aarya’s husband Tej (Chandrachur Singh) and his partners are drug mafia, running their trade under the garb of a pharmaceutical business.
The tele-play aims at building its storyline gradually over the episodes — only too gradually you would think, after the opening episode gives the show a dramatic plot-pusher, not to be revealed for the sake of shielding spoilers.
That momentum, however, gets squandered as Madhvani’s narrative tries accommodating too many sub-plots for too many characters.
The average runtime of each of the nine episodes ranges from around 45 to 55 minutes. You wish Madhvani and his co-directors (Sandeep Modi and Vinod Rawat) had stuck to the point, restricting the show to, may be, five episodes of 30 minutes each with sharper editing.
Pace is not the only problem. Despite basing its narrative on something as promising as a thriller about drug running and the deceptions that come in its wake, “Aarya” cannot boast of many authentic moments that thrill.
The most disappointing aspect is what the entire series ultimately decides to settle upon, for a ‘storyline’. Without giving away the plot, for all its intriguing premise, this is a hackneyed story about cops and mafia gunning for a USB stick that contains — ahem — secrets that could bring down the drug empire.
It reminds you of those B-flicks of yore. Back then, they would all be chasing a little black diary of ‘kachha-chittha’.
Nowadays it seems bad guys keep their black deeds documented in black pen drives.
From trailer and previews, you would have the broad idea that circumstances will force the homemmaker Aarya to take over her husband’s trade. (IANS)