Detectives of dullsville

The new season of 'Kohrra' feels perfunctory and familiar.

- RAJA SEN

A few months ago, I started a podcast (Play it Again). One of the first things I learned in the process of creating these was that most of us sound unbearably dull in real-time, while we hem and haw our way towards articulating a thought of varying significance, and that podcasts (even ones featuring your own voice) are best heard at 1.25x or even 1.5x. As speakers thinking about a question or debating a point, it takes most of us a while to “get to the point” and that thought shouldn't be foremost on the listener’s mind.

The new season of well-loved Netflix series Kohrra needs that bump, because it takes slow-burn storytelling so literally that it takes four out of six episodes to even start coming to the boil. The first season of the show, created by Sudip Sharma and directed by Randeep Jha, was compelling from the get-go—largely because of the old policeman played by a sublime Suvinder Vicky—and offered us something unfamiliar. Its slowness felt earned; we couldn't look away. Sure, that solid first season borrowed ideas and themes from Bong Joon Ho's Memories of Murder, but as a grounded Punjabi-language series, it felt real, immediate and plausible.