Karm Yuddh is a political-drama TV series directed by Ravi Adhikari and stars Paoli Dam, Satish Kaushik, Ashutosh Rana, Ankit Bisht and Pranay Pachauri, alongside other cast members. The series has 8 episodes, each with a runtime of around 40 minutes.
Hotstar describes the series as:
A deadly fire accident at the Roy Group of Industries brings Bhisham Roy under the scanner, inciting a power grab within the family.
– Karm Yuddh Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –
Karm Yuddh is the story of another powerful family, this time based in Kolkata, who will stop at nothing to get what they want. There’s discord within the family, and when you have a family like this, who needs enemies?
The series delves into the politics as much as it delves into the romantic life of the Roys’ younger members. The series is interesting, there are a lot of different alleys down which we see the corruption and the greed trickle down and destroy everything. However, for what it’s worth, that’s where the show loses its novelty for me.
As with all shows like this, Karm Yuddh focuses on several things that all boil down to power and possessing it. However, the series’ sheer number of storylines and moving parts are simply ridiculous and honestly, there’s no excuse to focus on so many different things and drag the storyline on unnecessarily.
We sit there, episode after episode, getting a minute or two of the interesting stuff while watching silly things happen for hours on end. Especially in this Abhimanyu Roy storyline – we see him being an entitled molester, creep and stalker, all the while romantic music plays in the back. Of course, the girl falls for him because stalking is so cute, apparently.
Coming to the politics, it’s interesting but nothing new. Paoli Dam’s Indrani Roy is fiery and, as usual, quite proficient in playing a hard-headed woman who is hell-bent on getting what she wants. However, the unnecessary bits in the storyline drag the runtime down so much that it gets difficult to stand behind Indrani and watch her twist her way to success.
As everyone tries to use everyone as a pawn in their game, you feel entangled in this mess in several different ways, some good and some bad. While the overall storyline is quite interesting and you’d find it difficult to understand where exactly all of this is going. At the same time, thanks to the sheer number of plots, the story gets a bit too complicated for no reason.
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Some characters feel unnecessary like their storylines were forcefully added for the shock factor or to pad the runtime. They don’t add anything, and neither do they add thrill to the overall watching experience. It’s very difficult when a show doesn’t really move you in any way, so you’re just left sitting there wondering what is even going on.
That’s mostly what I personally left about Karm Yuddh. It’s not horrendous, but it’s not really good, either.
Coming to basing the story in Kolkata – as usual, except for a few Bengali phrases and the story being shot in some well-known locales, there’s hardly anything Bengali in the show. With the amount of Hindi being spoken, you’d expect the Roys to be from some other part of India, but no – they are Bengalis who don’t speak Bangla in their everyday lives.
The show embodies the beauty of the city in the most-surface level way possible. You don’t feel like you see the culture coming through in any of the scenes that would make you believe in the reality of the story. At least the lead speaks some real Bengali and doesn’t have to struggle through the 5 dialogues that are in the show.
Summing Up: Karm Yuddh
Karm Yuddh is an interesting tale of revenge that has its moments. But it stretches itself out so thin that it’s impossible to sit through glued to the screen. If you’re going to watch this, watch it for the performances, they’re great.
Karm Yuddh is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
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