What Is the Story About?
ZEE5’s latest web show ‘Sunflower‘ is a whodunit and police procedural, rolled into one. It is an inverted detective story where the who and how of the murder is revealed right at the beginning. Of course, one can never be sure when it comes to murder mysteries – maybe there’s a twist or two waiting in the wings to surprise us out of our wits.
Early one morning, Raj Kapoor, a resident of Sunflower Housing Society, is found dead in his flat. The post-mortem report indicates that the man has been poisoned. Police Inspectors Digendra (Ranvir Shorey) and Tambe (Girish Kulkarni) begin their investigation, and as they dig deeper, they zero in on two primary suspects – Ahuja (Mukul Chadda), the dead man’s next-door neighbour; and Sonu Singh (Sunil Grover), a man with personality disorders, who lives two floors down. The murder takes place in the first few minutes of the story. The rest of the series centres on how the investigating team homes in on the murder weapon, the motive of murder and the primary suspect.
Sunflower has been directed by Vikas Bahl and Rahul Sengupta, and produced by Reliance Entertainment.
Performances?
Sunil Grover is remarkably persuasive as Sonu Singh, the lonely sales executive with personality disorders. He imbues Sonu’s outlandish, creepy and cloying character with a touching vulnerability. In the end, you don’t know whether he’s a manipulative rascal or a victim of his circumstances. Terrific performance, this! Ranvir Shorey puts in another assured performance as a hard-nosed, unsmiling police officer. The man is a veritable chameleon – the sheer variety of characters he’s played over the years – each more convincingly than the next – is astonishing.
Mukul Chadda will surprise you with his portrayal of the outrightly evil Dr Ahuja. The guy is a legit psychopath in the garb of a college professor, and Mukul Chadha is simply superb in the part. Girish Kulkarni is quite watchable as the lecherous policeman. Ashish Vidhyarthi plays a stunningly unique character in Sunflower. You don’t know whether to sympathise with his Dilip Iyer or smack him in the face. In that sense, Ashish Vidhyarthi has achieved the purpose of his character with perfection.
The rest of the cast, Radha Bhatt, Dayana Erappa, Saloni Khanna, Ria Nalavade, Simran Nerurkar, among others, bring a freshness to their characterisation, if only by virtue of being artists that aren’t over-exposed yet.
Analysis
The best thing about Sunflower is its well-etched-out characters. Each character is written in impressive detail, and is embellished with unique personality traits. Each is intricate and convoluted in its own way. The character of Sonu Singh is singularly one of a kind. He is lonely, majorly lacking in social skills, suffers from OCD, and has a Joker-esque fascination with the girls living next door to him. He’s edgy, creepy and weird – in short, the ideal suspect to pin a murder on. Mukul Chadha’s Dr Ahuja has quirks all of his own. He speaks in ‘shuddh’ Hindi, is a PhD holder, megalomaniacal, misogynistic and given to sudden bouts of unreasonable rage. Again, a complex and layered character.
Ashish Vidhyarthi‘s character of Dilip Iyer can be labelled the sum total of the moral police of the entire country. He passes indictment on everyone – literally everyone – solely on the basis of their choices in life. Divorcees, live-in couples, same-sex couples, Muslims, people from a class perceived as lower by him (the panwala scene), the twice married, single young girls living on their own – they are all on his radar, and judged for ‘spoiling the culture’, as he says. The character of Dilip Iyer is Vikas Bahl’s sharp, and not too flattering, critique of Indian society at large, and its narrow-minded outlook in particular.
Having said that, it must also be said that the characterisations in Sunflower are the only good thing about the series. Other than those, the narrative of the series is a bunch of pompous, self-indulgent, meanderings, each of which does nothing but take the plot in directions that seem utterly random, and dispensable in the larger scheme of things.
The narrative gets a bit monotonous after numerous repetitive sequences, haphazard subplots and silly goofing around (Sonu getting his pants flicked in the office, for instance) that eventually lead nowhere. The story is left hanging in mid-air, indicating a second season.
To sum up, Sunflower is cleverly written, especially its characters, but too much wandering and wavering from the core plot blunts the edge of the clever writing. What could have been a crisp, taut plot turns out to be a damp squib as a result.
Music and Other Departments?
The background score by Sahej Bakshi and Sarvesh Shrivastava is excellent. It sets the right tone for the crucial scenes to play out, and also for the frivolous ones, for that matter. Sudhakar Reddy Yakkanti’s cinematography is notable. The first few shots – right from the coconut vendor transporting the coconuts on his cycle, to delivering the coconut to the murder victim – are superb. Konark Saxena’s editing is flawless.
Highlights?
Performances
Superbly-written characters
Well made
Drawbacks?
Self-indulgent, hence meandering
Too many redundant sub-plots spoil the broth
Repetitive sequences could have been cut out to make a crisper product
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes, to an extent
Will You Recommend It?
Yes, as a one-time watch.
Sunflower Hindi Web Series Review by Binged Bureau
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