Right from the first episode itself, the conversations in Search: The Naina Murder Case have the quality of sparring and jousting.
Police officers Sanyukta and Jai, politicians Tushar and Pradeep, Tushar’s campaign managers Sahil and Raksha, the teenager Naina and her friends – each of them is poised against the other, verbal swords on ready. Brought together by Naina’s rape and murder, the characters battle their way through a tricky case with pretzel-shaped twists.
The JioHotstar series, written by Shreya Karunakaran and Radhika Anand, is based on the popular Danish series Forbrydelsen (The Killing). Having set its characters on a collision course, the Hindi show eventually settles into a murder mystery with no shortage of suspects.
Sanyukta (Konkona Sensharma) is all set to rejoin her husband Bheesham (Mukul Chadda) in another city. The investigation into Naina’s demise postpones Sanyukta’s departure, much to Bheesham’s annoyance.
Sanyukta’s boss Rathi (Naved Aslam) teams her up with the new recruit Jai (Surya Sharma). A textbook chauvinist with cocked gun and cocky attitude, Jai is the very opposite of the self-assured, measured and forensically-minded Sanyukta.
Tushar (Shiv Panditt) is similarly an island of calm despite the circumstances. On the brink of a crucial election against Pradeep (Govind Namdeo), Tushar is kept busy by his fractious aides Sahil (Dhruv Sehgal) and Raksha (Shraddha Das), while also trying to dodge the career-ending allegation that he is somehow linked to Naina (Chandsi Kataria).
Flashbacks reveal other possible perpetrators – Naina’s friends Ojas (Kabir Kachroo), Aarav (Anmol Rawat) and Lavanya (Atiya Nayak), Naina’s teacher Randhir (Varun Thakur). Naina’s shattered parents Payal (Irawati Mayadev) and Uddhav (Sagar Deshmukh) wait for justice to reach its destination.
Director Rohan Sippy ably steers the suspense-heavy narrative. Despite the presence of cellphones, dark web apps and teenage drug culture, Search is old-fashioned, most worried about people who wear masks in public and behave differently in private.
Sippy also handles the sprawling cast well, persuading Surya Sharma to dial down his tendency towards bombast and giving Shiv Panditt’s Tushar dignity and enigma. These actors, alongside the reliably magnetic Konkona Sensharma, also have the most notable character arcs. The fates of an increasingly beleaguered Tushar and a lately mysterious Jai matter nearly as much as the identity of Naina’s killer.
Search takes its tonal cues from Konkona Sensharma’s laser-focused Sanyukta. She has an unwaveringly clinical air, whether dealing with her own adolescent daughter Mahi (Pari Tonk), swatting away Bheesham’s ire or ignoring Jai’s jibes. Sanyukta keeps declaring that she is ready to move on to her next assignment, but she barely means it.
The chilliness that appears to have wafted over from the original Nordic source does mean minimal emotional investment in Naina, who dies horribly, or her grieving parents. Sanyukta’s fraying marriage, Tushar’s political ambitions and Jai’s obduracy exist only to bolster the murder investigation, which is gripping in of itself.
Search frustratingly turns off the tap just when the flow is the strongest, ending on a cliffhanger after six episodes. This ploy to keep viewers hooked interrupts the momentum that has been steadily building up. Fortunately, Search has enough reserve fuel to resume the journey.
