After inspiring several unauthorised knockoffs, Sherlock Holmes officially comes to India – sort of. Shekhar Home, featuring a Bengali avatar of Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective, is decidedly non-canonical in its approach and treatment.
From the silly pun involved in the title to Shekhar Home’s antics, the JioCinema series is light-hearted and insouciant, forever jabbing in the ribs of serious-minded Holmesians. Created by Aniruddha Guha and Srijit Mukherji, Shekhar Home is baggily based on Conan Doyle stories available in the public domain. Mukherji also directs four out of the six episodes written by Guha and Niharika Puri.
The overall tone is closest to the BBC series Sherlock led by Benedict Cumberbatch (Shekhar Home has been produced by BBC Studios India). Sherlock, apart from plonking Holmes in a contemporary setting, took massive liberties with the source material. Shekhar Home too plays with Doyle’s creations, laying out familiar and yet distinctive arcs for Shekhar (Kay Kay Menon) and the Watsonian Jayvrat (Ranvir Shorey).
Sherlock’s brother Mycroft is Mrinmay (Kaushik Sen), his housekeeper Mrs Hudson is Mrs Henry (Shernaz Patel) and the bumbling cop Lestrade is Laha (Rudranil Ghosh). Irene Adler, the only woman to pierce Holmes’s adamantine heart, is Irabaty (Rasika Dugal).
The Hindi-language show takes place between 1991 and 1993 in the fictitious town Lonpur. Shekhar arrives here with a sizeable collection of batik kurtas and massive talent. Together with the doctor Jayvrat, the rabab-strumming Shekhar solves a series of crimes, from a peculiar advertisement for a groom to seemingly supernatural murders.
The show’s Moriarty, or M, is already at work. M weaves in and out of Shekhar’s investigations until their paths cross in the final two episodes, which are directed by Rohan Sippy.
The Bengali flavour is prominent without being overwhelming. Rabindranath Tagore, who was around in the nineteenth century when Sherlock Holmes was solving cases, turns up in a key episode. There’s a cheeky reference to Sushmita Sen, who hadn’t yet been crowned Miss Universe. In his old-fashioned reliance on footwork and brain-work, Shekhar is as much the inheritor of Bengali detection fiction traditions as he is a homage to Doyle’s iconic creation.
The show feels like a relaxed picnic without any intention of getting back to work. Breezy and irreverent, Shekhar Home’s attitude is best captured by its high-performing hero’s high-pitched giggle whenever a breakthrough occurs. Even the prospect of world destruction – or the annihilation of Kolkata at any rate – cannot douse the perennial twinkle in Shekhar’s eye.
Astutely cast actors, smooth rapport between Shekhar and Jayvrat and humour supplied by Vaibhav Vishal’s dialogue compensate for the entirely forgettable cases leading up to Shekhar’s face-off with M. A big twist that goes in the opposite direction of dogma, while simultaneously yoking the series back to Sherlock Holmes’s conventional trajectory, flies well.
The frivolity relaxes somewhat in exactly one episode. More important than this particular case is the frisson between Shekhar and Irabaty. Among the several departures from the source material, this humanising of a famously rigid sleuth with regard to women is the most welcome.
Kay Kay Menon wonderfully brings Shekhar to life through expected tics as well as contributions of his own. There is the inappropriate banter, the awkwardness in social situations, the kinetic energy, but also ample mirth and warmth. Rather than contempt towards the less gifted, Menon’s detective is brilliant without being overbearing, a genial class topper rather than an insufferable genius.
Did you know already or it is guesswork, Irabaty asks Shekhar. Guessing is hardly work, the flustered Shekhar replies. But there’s nothing casual about Menon’s rigour.
The rest of the cast shines too, with Ranvir Shorey making a fine partner to Shekhar, Rasika Dugal coolly slinky, Shernaz Patel in good form as the accommodating landlady, Kaushik Sen suitably ruffled and Kaushik Sen correctly inefficient.
