Dhootha has a lot that should make a Telugu film critic root for it. It features a morally grey protagonist, an exploration of the ethical conundrums of journalism, a female detective who frequently upends the men in the show with her clever deductions, and it is unafraid to depict violence (even police brutality) and death—all rarities in Telugu cinema. It has the structure of the web series down pat—with every episode ending with a cliffhanger or a death that keeps you clicking on the button that skips the end credits to start the next episode.
For the first few episodes, this manages to work—you overlook the slightly questionable lead performance, the awkward dialogue which seems to be translated into Telugu from another language, the pedantic text on screen which tells us that we’re in “Sagar’s Apartment.” at “11:41 AM” as if the former wasn’t evident and the latter was somehow significant. But soon, the show struggles with balancing its procedural elements with its more extravagant flourishes, its slasher movie deaths with a poor attempt at earnest political engagement. At a certain point we learn of a crime in the past that might have laid the foundation for the show’s present—and despite good performances from Tharun Bhaskar and Tanikella Bharani in this section, you can’t help but be disappointed at the vapidity with which it engages with its underlying themes (It doesn’t help that an excellent locked-room mystery in this section is revealed in the worst way possible, robbing the denouement of the thrill of revelation).
What the show lacks is an artistic vision that coheres its disparate influences into a compelling piece. For most of its runtime, it feels scattered, a bits-and-pieces affair that is throwing an assortment of cliches at you—hiding behind genre though it can’t resist its pretence towards a soul. It’s set in a world which seems to be permanently drenched in rainfall because that’s how Fincher’s Se7en (1995) went about weaving its atmosphere, but if one of the most noteworthy things in your show is a reference, that’s saying something.
