JL50
Shailender Vyas has put forward a definition for the television industry of India showcasing the true meaning of a science fiction thriller by directing a 4-episode miniseries, JL 50. The show stars Abhay Deol, Pankaj Kapur, Ritika Anand, Piyush Mishra, and Rajesh Sharma that have put together their acting skills and created a wondrous world, for the exploration of the audience and all the seriocomic but it is quite foreseeable.
Just a final alert before entering the spoiler zone. Alright! So, the series is based in West Bengal, and it begins with the hijacking of flight AO26 by a group of terrorists who have demanded the release of their leader, Partho Majumdar (played by Mrinal Mukherjee). The CBI believed that AO26 had crashed but on reaching the site it was found out that the crashed flight was JL50, the flight that went missing 35 years ago (in 1984). Well, how is that possible? Time travel! There are only two survivors of JL50 for whom the journey lasted for about 3.5 hours- the pilot, Bihu Ghosh (played by the producer herself, Ritika Anand) and Mister Biswajeet Chandra Mitra ( played by Piyush Mishra): the mastermind, who “broke the code” to time travel and took help for the execution of his plan from the head of a communist organization AB, Partho Majumdar. The investigating officers of the case is Gaurango (Rajesh Sharma) whose character is used as comic relief and is the local Watson to the local Sherlock Holmes, Shantanu (Abhay Deol), another CBI investigator who later discovered himself as the son of the lucky Pilot, Bihu, when he flies back with Das (Pankaj Kapur), student of Mr. Mitra and her, to 1984 to stop Mr. Mitra in that time so as to prevent the crash from happening 35 years later.
The trailer caught my eye and prepared me for the show but as I progressed through the spark ran out slowly. Firstly, I think apart from some twists, the script is quite a lot predictable, ruling out all the nail-biter moments for the watchers. Secondly, there are jumps in the script, it looks more like a long narrative series that have been redirected and cut to form a four-episode miniseries, fast-forwarding all the drama out of it and wrapping it up in just 150 minutes. For example, in just a single episode they find out the plane was JL50 and Mr. Das was the only passenger that didn’t board the plane 35 years go, go to his school, and even questions him regarding this subject. Another absurd thing that I felt was how Mr. Das was straightforward while convincing Shantanu about time travel. Mishra’s character didn’t quite fit the role of man of science in JL50.
Another thing that I felt was how there were things in the story that were just left hanging or incomplete and fragmental, like the love life of Deol’s character that is portrayed throughout the 4-episodes as quite disturbed is just left dangling.
The best thing that happened to the show was Pankaj Kapur because he is the one holding the show together. His acting was quite appreciable since the beginning and he talks about, how us Indians are so easily persuaded or brainwashed that we can’t see anything beyond religion and walk right into the territory of andh-Vishwas and are blindfolded into seeing the possibility of there being a proper scientific reason for it made me all ears. Deol’s straight face and fake Bengali accent proved that his struggling days aren’t still over. Ritika Anand’s acting did give a bit of an eerie vibe throughout the show. Gauranga played by Rajesh Sharma was put in the show as comic relief but played his role quite well. He would have put up a more good performance if he had been given more screen time.
I really liked this one of the watcher’s reviews about the portrayal of 2019 Kolkata and 1984 Calcutta, that was quite appreciable but it would have been better if the beauty of Kolkata would have been showcased more to cover up for the missed days of lockdown. Honestly speaking, the sounds and the setting of the scene added more to the climax than the actors.
JL50 needed to keep the audience engrossed in this time-travel fantasy because a fascinating concept like this could have been more impactful. The only thing that lacked was the effort and execution. The saying holds true here: ‘What fails a good script is a sloppy execution’. Even after this, JL50’s attempt is a praiseworthy one in bringing past-future vibes along with some good mixes of Indian history with the concept of time-travel and, setting up a reasonably high bar for all the movies or shows that will be directed in this genre in the years to come.
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