The Trial gives a headlining role to Kajol, who has being doing far-from-ordinary work in web series. The adaptation of the award-winning American series The Good Wife faces the challenge of localising a show about the American legal system for Indian conditions and making the plotlines work here.
The eight-episode show, directed by Suparn S Varma for Disney+ Hotstar, begins well, as did The Good Wife. Noyonika (Kajol) finds her life upended when her husband Rajiv (Jisshu Sengupta), an additional judge, is arrested in a sex scandal. A clip of Rajiv is flaunted on TV by sensation-mongering anchor Daksh (Atul Kumar). Rajiv’s accounts are frozen and his privileges revoked.
Noyonika and her two teenage daughters are not just humiliated but have to leave their lavish home. (It’s hardly a struggle – their new apartment is swanky by any standard, but palatial for Mumbai.) After a lot of rejections, Noyonika gets hired as a junior lawyer at the firm run by her former boyfriend Vishal (Alyy Khan) and his wry partner Malini (resplendent in Bengali saris). Noyonika has to compete with the ambitious Dheeraj (Gaurav Pandey), who resents her nepotism hire.
Noyonika still drives a sedan – she had to sell the Merc! She has a vast wardrobe and designer bags, but cannot afford her children’s school fees. In spite of having been away from the courts for a decade, she wades right in and gets high-profile cases, such as the murder of a cricketer, for which his girlfriend stands accused. She relies on street-smart investigator Sana (Kubbra Sait) to bring in crucial clues. Being the leading lady, she never loses. Despite huffing and puffing about justice and fairness, she uncharacteristically resorts to underhand means to save her husband.
“Shaadi ko nibhana padta hai” (marriages must be preserved), Noyonika says like a 1950s “good wife” – the label given to her by Daksh. The daughters, seemingly traumatised by the father’s sexual escapade and watching his videos repeatedly, ask Noyonika why she is punishing him by banishing him to the couch.
The script, by Hussain Dalal, Abbas Dalal and Siddharth Kumar, picks some of the cases from the original show but adds needless touches. The notoriously tardy Indian legal system is reduced to instant popcorn to fit the average episode’s 40-45 minute run-time.
The episode of Noyonika defending a boy from a murder charge works because of its no-nonsense approach. Other cases, such as a defamation allegation against Daksh or a builder accused of negligence in the death of construction workers, are too simplistic or rushed.
Rajiv has an all-purpose fixer, Ilyas (Aseem Hattangadi), who has a solution for every problem and appears just when Noyonika has a personal or professional crisis. In between, Noyonika spars with her mother-in-law (Beena Banerjee), visits her husband in a too-clean jail to snap and glower at him, and slogs long hours, making one wonder what the other lawyers in the huge and gleaming office of the law firm do. For that matter, all Malini does is smoke and complain.
Sana, with her own romantic triangle going on with Dheeraj and a possessive cop (Amir Ali), is the most interesting of the supporting characters. The firm’s invisible third partner, Kishore (Kiran Kumar), strides in, two female acolytes in tow, bringing a whiff of old Bollywood villainy.
Kajol is given annoying internal pop-philosophical monologues about love, trust, destiny and faith. She more than pulls her weight, keeping the show from sinking. Kajol is the major attraction of The Trial, and will probably be the only reason it will have a second season.
