Special Squad - Indeed Special. Review on Star Utsav

Firstly, sorry for including this review on the Star Utsav Channel. This review corresponds to a serial on this channel - named Special Squad.

Special Squad - At last something ’watchable’

Star

Utsav - what is that? Special Squad - never heard of it. These were my intial thoughts on this teleserial & channel. Its been years since STB, DTH have made entry into Chennai homes. (I believe) Chennai was the ’first’ metro in India to have lapped up the idea of allowing only FTA through cable and making STBs a requirement to any one who’d wanted Pay-Channels (read Star Plus, Zee, Star World, HBO, et al).

With a huge Tamil (or rather Thamizh) engal-uyir-moochu stuff happening in the 80s & 90s (to an extent that even around a few years back I’ve observed black-paint applied on "mile"boards around the Chennai-Chengalpet NH on any place-name written in Hindi), seems like Chennai & Chennaiites loved the idea. But, it does take a little thinking on how much efforts (& profits) should/would need to be attributed to the Marans to ensure this ’Regularisation’ of the Cable TV sector.

It doesn’t take a nuclear scientist to analyze the numbers of STB sales and its direct linkage to SCV’s profits/revenues. Anyways, thats a whole different story - a rather lengthy detour from Aryan, Ajay, Boxer, Shy, Neha et al.

Star Utsav is a channel that essentially shows ’re-runs’ of the KSBKBTs, KGGKs, Kasauti’s, Sanjivani’s etc - stuff which became extinct from Chennai’s lower-middle & middle class homes. Star Utsav - Yup, its just another television channel from Rupert jii’s Star Network. And Special Squad - well, thats not pretty much ’another’ anything.

In those days of Discovery Channel, Medical/Forensic Investigators was a series that kept me interested a lot. Special Squad is Star’s own take of this - of course, modified in a major way to suit India (i.e. India - from Star Networks’ point of view).

Aryan is the lead character who has recently been in a flip-flop manner the Head, Asst Head of this apparently small team of crime ’investigators’. His team consists of 2 officers (Ajay, Boxer, who do the ground work), a computer-expert/ operator (Neha), 2 Medicos (Shotgun & Papa jii - who usually perform the autopsy, match finger prints, foot prints, tyre marks, etc). Well, thats pretty much a brief intro about the serial.

What I like:

a. The director doesnt believe in too much dramatization or suspense or action. All of it is present in an appropriate amount - unlike KSBKBTs or KGGKs. There is emotion, but its depicted in a manner thats ’not-so’ filmy/televisionyyy.

b. Its fast-paced, mostly. Unlike most other serials, there is no extra-rubbery stretching of the story line to fill in the minutes & maintain a suspense (Something thats prevalent in other such crime-based serials).

c. Its a profession-based serial that concentrates on the profession (i.e. solving crimes) and looks into the characters’ personal lives only as much is required & that too usually when the personal life affects the character’s work/performance.

d. Aryan’s zest for his work. His energy levels and focussed efforts.

e. Shotgun’s appropriate attitude - work is work, not life and no amount of work would affect me. He keeps his cool and fits onto his duties - nothing more, nothing less.

f. Direction & Portrayal of various characters, Casting is good too.

What I’d like them to improve on:

a. Aryan’s wife & daughter have been poisoned to death. Its a murder thats not been solved, yet. And at least 5 minutes per hour, Aryan is shown to be affected by this incident. All said and done, I think everyone needs to ’progress’ - needs to move on - needs to be dynamic. This characterization & portrayal is highly negativized and definitely could be improved.

b. Ajay’s characterization as a flirtatious & overly-bullying person is highly avoidable. The manner in which Ajay & Boxer deal with suspects is highly questionable and is a direct slur on the image of crime-fighters. I recollect the real-life characters described in John Grisham’s book ’The Innocent Man’ to relate with these traits - definitely not the sign of a true crime-solver.

c. Pre-judiced thinking v/s Gut feel or intuition: There seems to be a confusion between these two aspects of the human mind when it comes to forming impressions at the initial stages of solving the crime. Aryan is shown to be someone that doesn’t really differentiate between these two - apart from situations when its another person going by his/her gut-feel.

If at all, you are interested to know more on what I have been blabbering about - watch Star Utsav on Week-ends 21 00 hrs India time. Thanks for spending time & reading my thoughts!!

Rgds,

MN