Shodha - Breezy with Rough edges

Shodha

Kannada - Suspense/ Drama

6 Episodes ~ 18 mins
Zee5

Prologue

2025 finally heralds the mainstreaming of web series in Kannada. Earlier this year, Ayyana Mane premiered on Zee5. I think it was a reasonable attempt, but really hampered by a rather underwhelming performance by the lead, Kushee Ravi (Dia), in what was a really solid part of her.

There is also an interesting trend I notice on Zee5, where what feels like a 100–120 minute movie seems to be cut into 6–7 episodes and presented as a web series. I noticed this with a couple of Tamil mini-series as well. While i am not complaining about the runtime, I do hope this does not become the norm—sacrificing storytelling to cater to short attention spans of today.

The Review

Rohit (Pawan Kumar) is a lawyer,  headed home for his birthday dinner. We see him chatting with his daughter Tara who is away in boarding school. At home, there is a cake, there is wine, there is a beautiful celebration waiting—except his wife, Meera, is missing. He goes to the cops, they file an FIR, and the investigation begins. To add to his misery, Rohit meets with an accident and wakes up in the hospital with severe trauma.

Meanwhile, Meera (Siri Ravikumar), Rohit’s supposedly missing wife, has returned—except Rohit vehemently claims she is not his wife! The lead investigator, Bhairava (Arun Sagar), smells a rat but cannot quite sniff it out. Is Meera lying? Or is Rohit covering something up?

Pawan Kumar is, of course, better known as the director who heralded new-gen filmmaking in Kannada with Lucia and U Turn. Here, he is decent as Rohit—a little uneven when he has to use more Kannada, but generally comfortable with Kanglish. He does, however, absolutely nail a crucial scene towards the end. Siri Ravikumar is alluring as the mysterious Meera and gives a moody performance. Arun Sagar, as the cop, is quite good—he even gets probably the one genuinely funny sequence in the series.

Shodha is a smart reworking of the original British film Chase a Crooked Shadow, which has also been adapted into Sesh Anka (Bengali), Puthiya Paravai (Tamil), Khoj (Hindi, 1989, which i highly recommend!), and a few others. The twists are handled well and upgraded nicely for today’s times.

Technically, it is a superior product with strong sound design, cinematography, and background score. That said, some crucial sequences feel a little rough around the edges. Also, given the setting (Madikeri), there is also the token backstory about a Kodava warrior woman, which barely adds anything to the plot and handled differently.

I also feel that given the short episode lengths, a lot of scenes come off undercooked—especially between the main characters. At times, it feels like one of those abridged versions of books we all read in our English lessons at school. That is what Shodha eventually is, lightweight in depth, but slick enough to keep you hooked till the end.