Mirzapur and Bosch (TV Series), Two Binge-Worthy Series on Prime

Mirzapur is no Paatal Lok and it doesn’t even come close to the Gangs of Wasseypur, but it is compulsively watchable because it is a wicked joy to see scumbags get their just deserts. It all begins at a wedding…

The iron-fisted Akhandanand Tripathi (Pankaj Tripathi) is a millionaire carpet exporter and the mafia don of Mirzapur. His son, Munna (Divyendu Sharma), is an unworthy, power-hungry heir who will stop at nothing to inherit his father’s legacy. An incident at a wedding procession forces him to cross paths with Ramakant Pandit (Rajesh Tailang), an upstanding lawyer, and his sons, Guddu (Ali Fazal) and Bablu (Vikrant Massey). It snowballs into a game of ambition, power and greed that threatens the fabric of this lawless city.

Ah yes… the wedding… it’s a shocker. It isn’t what happened that made it a shocker but the way it was brushed off that is scary, kind of like you just squashed a mosquito in the midst of sucking your blood and you just flicked it away without a smidgen of thought. It immediately dawned on me that in the city of Mirzapur, a gun in hand is worth two in the glove compartment. This one takes the lawless Wild West to a whole different level. Forget about the police… the men at the top are fed so much money that they give free rein to the gangsters.

You know how you wake up every morning and look at the bills you have to pay, and you wonder “only rich people don’t have problems like these”. Mirzapur will affirm in you that the rich and powerful have a different set of problems. They too worry about money like “how do I drive up the sales of homemade guns and heroin?”. They are also concerned who is encroaching into their business, who is not fearful of them and the man at the top of the food chain also has an erectile dysfunction problem, so much so that his wife, Beena (Rasika Dungal), has to search for sexual pleasure through a manservant. So yes… this is a dysfunctional family saga and I rub my hands in glee when the don will finally realise the baby is not his. 

The flow of the narrative is clunky and sometimes characters are inserted to serve a lone purpose, some for titillation, some for shocking deaths. Talking about deaths, this one borrows from Game of Thrones’ blueprint in laying out shocking deaths. The ending of S1 certainly dropped my heart to the floor. I went through a gamut of feelings and I was all in for S2. Oh… before I forget, to possibly survive a gun pointed at your head, pray you know how to recite the ABC in Hindi and definitely Urdu.

Characters are the fabric of good storytelling and here they are not drawn with satisfaction. Character motivations are never consistent and don’t adhere to real life scenarios. Munna is slapped by a lust-bucket of a politician and the don says “nobody slaps my son in public” and you know the dude is going to get a knife in his back. Then when Munna, the good-for-nothing, gets wronged grievously by Bablu and Guddu, the brothers get to work for the don and get all sorts of perks like guns and motorcycles. A few episodes later, the don even gives them the lowdown on his shady business and entrusts them with huge responsibilities. It made no sense to me.

What does make sense to me is seeing the theme of how power corrupts even the righteous flourish. The acting is all round excellent and the actors give their all, and the devilish joy they have in spouting the spot-on dialogue is evident. 

Mirzapur isn’t a top-tier series but it is an absolutely solid escapist entertainment into the world of gangsters in a far-flung lawless city in India. I dare you to not laugh at the dude who has a torchlight pushed to the back of his throat as he runs for his life, and Guddu becomes a temporary dentist. 

While watching Mirzapur, I found out that Bosch has a new season of good ole detective work. It only took us 3 binge sessions to get through this and it’s as good as ever.

There’s a workman-like ethic to Bosch in the way the investigation unfolds. It is authentically portrayed – the hard and meticulous work is evident. None of that stupid driving music to announce an action scene or a moment of epiphany. Music is used in a diegetic manner to smooth out edits and most of the time you wouldn’t be aware of it, so much so that when Bosch plays his jazz, like Art Pepper’s Patricia, you hear it like a cool experience. 

I love Michael Connelly’s books on Bosch. Connelly understands cop and drama. He knows the pain and sorrow that walk in tandem to the relentless search for justice. The toil is palpable but never cliché. In Maddie, Bosch’s daughter, you can see the dynamics in play. She is her father’s daughter, a chip of the old block. I love how they bounce off ideas with each other and their closeness. There is absolutely no doubt they would take a bullet for each other. The father-daughter angle is well-handled, none of that hue and cry crap that underscores so many other dramas. 

Each season takes all the principal characters to a new place and I am glad this season gives Jerry the limelight in a case that will tear him apart from the inside out. I love the Crate and Barrel’s stories. Their chasing criminals days may be over, but you can never take the police out of them. 

This season borrows from Connelly’s The Overlook and Dark Sacred Night, and it is the best season yet. If you are a fan of the novels or Bosch, the TV series, you would watch this no matter what I wrote. If you have never seen this, know that this is a shining example of great police procedural storytelling. Heck! If I am not a teacher, I want to be a detective like Bosch.

Written by Daniel Chiam