After Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper on Netflix comes another show that seeks to normalise male sex work while exposing its pitfalls. Rangeen on Prime Video gets its title from the alias that the journalist Adarsh adopts after he becomes an escort.
Throughout the Hindi series, Adarsh is referred to as a gigolo – that visual word that conjures up the image of bodies jiggling in happy communion. But Adarsh (Viineet Kumar Siingh) isn’t happy. He has caught wife Naina (Rajshri Deshpande) with the sex worker Sunny (Taaruk Raina). Adarsh is so humiliated by the affront to his manhood that he decides that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Therapists and divorce lawyers are presumably on vacation in this city, which is small enough for characters to keep running each other but large enough for a thriving male variation of Belle Du Jour. Adarsh has no shortage of clients, who are sent his way by the madam, Sitara (Sheeba Chadha).
Sunny – younger, fitter, more charming – is in for serious competition.
Meanwhile, the newspaper that Adarsh co-owns is in the doldrums. There’s the matter of a gun that has to be resolved. And Sitara’s side hustle. And Jugnu (Ratnabali Bhattacharjee), with whom Adarsh gets along rather well.
The show has been created and written by Amir Rizvi and Amardeep Galsin and directed by Kopal Naithani and Pranjal Dua. Rangeen has a way of starting a train of thought and then setting it aside for something else.
The idea is presumably to pad a slim premise – there’s only so much of Adarsh’s dithering that viewers can take. Were it not for the actors and a bunch of well-written scenes, Rangeen would have been as colourless as Adarsh.
The makers rely on contrivance and coincidence to connect various plot strands. They take their time too, stretching out scenes and prolonging matters all the way to nine episodes.
The easily distracted plot is the most coherent when regarding Adarsh’s bumbling adventures in gigolodom. While these moments are supposed to be comic, Adarsh’s agony is unmistakeable, giving the humour a dark edge.
The scenes from a broken-down marriage seethe with volcanic rage – Adarsh attacks his memory foam mattress with alarming intensity as the idea of punishing Naina begins to consume him. Adarsh’s behaviour – so juvenile and questionable as to be nonsensical – is at least halfway plausible because of Viineet Kumar Siingh’s admirable immersion in Adarsh’s partly self-inflicted angst.
Taaruk Raina is very good too as Sunny. The bickering between Sunny and Adarsh leads to some genuinely funny scenes. Sunny’s track stops making sense soon enough, but Raina stays on course.
Sheeba Chadha is foxy as Sitara, whose faux aristocratic manner fools nobody, including herself. Ratnabali Bhattacharjee provides solid back-up as the enigmatic Jugnu.
An important character who gets short shrift is Rajshri Deshpande’s Naina. The show makes Naina the mouthpiece for feminist thoughts, but Naina’s arc is too indifferently developed to make the points stick.
In its attitude towards sex work, the show is an improvement on Tribhuvan Mishra (about a debt-ridden chartered accountant) as well as B.A. Pass, Ajay Bahl’s erotic thriller film from 2012. Adarsh’s involvement with a profession that initially disgusts him is less erratic than his journalism, which soon falls by the wayside – as does a great deal in the series.
While the characters are fun to get to know, the feeling they have of being lost and forced into things they can’t handle infects Rangeen too. The show is bursting with incidents, but vividness is in short supply.
