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When I interacted with actor Surya Sharma last year, he had informed me that the fourth season of Undekhi, the series for which he is best known, was being shot. So now, we have Undekhi—Season 4: The Final Battle. But even now, we have something akin to a cliffhanger even as all the loose ends are tied up. Ergo, the imaginative creators may well spin a Season 5, even if, as described above, the present suffix talks of a final battle.
Undekhi has undoubtedly been one of SonyLIV’s best offerings. It remains their only multi-season series where every part bettered the previous season. And S4, as it is called, is no exception.
The best part (of course there are so many that I will soon mention!) about this is that the men in the family around whom the series pivots are ruthless criminals, but they are so well delineated that we start feeling for them and judging them more for their good sides rather than the fact that they kill uninhibitedly. By the time this season reaches mid-point (there are eight episodes) they become not only our heroes but have more diabolical villains to face. And we want them to win and decimate the baddies! That is this series’ finest aspect: that good will not always win over the bad, but the comparative good must win over the comparative worse! Get it?
The Manali-based Atwal family is headed by Papaji a.k.a. Surinder Singh Atwal (Harsh Chhaya never had a better role!) and when the story begins this time, is alienated from his adopted and otherwise completely ruthless son, Rinku (Surya Sharma). Rinku, all along, was not only his right-hand man but also devoted to him.
But at the end of Season 3, Rinku had just learned that Papaji had killed his own pregnant wife Muskaan (Shivangi Singh) just as he had been responsible for the death of Rinku’s mother years ago. He has also found out that their business rival, Rajveer Malhotra (Varun Badola) is actually his biological father, Mahinder Atwal and is Papaji’s brother, framed and sentenced for Rinku’s mother’s murder that Papaji actually committed.
The plot diversifies cleverly into other areas. Papaji is just out after five years in jail for Muskaan’s murder, even though he has always claimed innocence. Rinku cannot bear the sight of him and has joined forces with Mahinder. Mahinder has a team of people, led by Deepika (Shruthy Menon) and the psychopathic killer, DJ (Saqib Ayub).
Papaji’s own son, Daman (Ankur Rathee) has left his pregnant wife Teji (Anchal Singh) after a serious misunderstanding. She has married Vikram (Gautam Rode), a businessman, and they bring up her daughter, Samaira (Samaira Pawar, incredibly cute) along with Vikram’s niece, Natasha (Shivjyoti Rajput), who lives with them. Daman visits Samaira often and Teji has died in an accident.
Vikram has plans to expand his business and now Papaji and Mahinder are vying for the multi-crore deal. He also runs the Dream Foundation, a social organization to help girls, that he names after Teji. Meanwhile, the top-level officer investigating the Atwals’ past misdeeds, now Superintendent of Police Ghosh (Divyendu Bhattacharya) is looking into a case of missing adolescent girls. And three brothers from Canada come to strike a business deal with Mahinder. The youngest, Bobby (Saurav Khurana), is a pop singer and Rinku decides to promote him. At his first concert, he is shot dead.
Matters become more intriguing when Ghosh finds out that he was carrying on with Preeti (Debatamma Saha), one of the missing girls. He and the local inspector, Rashi (Lavina Tandon) and rookie cop Rehaan (Manik Papneja) get deep into investigating the racket.
Meanwhile, many more murders are planned and executed by mysterious or known forces, even as Papaji’s loyalist Lucky (Vaarun Bhagat) returns to be his staunch loyalist, even though he has a bone to pick with Rinku.
But then, everything is not what it seems…
Writers Ashish R. Shukla (also the director of all the seasons), Chirag Salian and Siddharth Sengupta have done a fantastic job indeed, and every sequence and every line makes a mark. Each character is fleshed out stunningly and with great detail. As director, Shukla seems to be enjoying himself all through the seasons, and he very well makes sure the audience is also on the same trip. The way the various threads come together is astonishingly lucid, convincing and enthralling, and as I said earlier, you start wishing that each time they kill, the Atwals are not sent to jail but can destroy their enemies all the same.
Fantastic locales and cinematography (Murzy Pagdiwala), production design (Anindita Somitra Chaturvedi) and editing (Rajesh G. Pandey and Sourabh Prabhudesai) help enhance the show further. The fabulous music score (Anuj Danait and Shivam Sengupta) makes us impatient to know what is going to happen next, which means it gets us supremely involved in the emotions behind everything happening on screen.
And if the above paragraph is about all the cherries on this cake, the confectionery itself is magnificent: Harsh Chhaya apart, we have astounding turns yet again from Surya Sharma and Divyendu Bhattacharya. Varun Badola as Mahinder, Saqib Ayub as DJ, Vaarun Bhagat as Lucky, Shivjyoti Rajput as Natasha, Ayn Zoya as Saloni, Meenakshi Sethi as Papaji’s wife, Saurav Khurana as Bobby, the correctly understated Ankur Rathee as Daman, and Lavina Tandon and Manik Papneja as the cops are all brilliant.
And they all help the show gets its indefinable but solid aura and brilliance. A full rating this time!
Rating: *****
SonyLIV presents Applause Entertainment’s & Banijay Asia’s Undekhi Season 4 Produced by: Sameer Nair, Deepak Dhar, Deepak Segal & Rajesh Chadha Directed by: Ashish R. Shukla Written by: Ashish R. Shukla, Chirag Salian & Siddharth Sengupta Music: Anuj Danait & Shivam Sengupta Starring: Harsh Chhaya, Surya Sharma, Varun Badola, Ankur Rathee, Anchal Singh, Ayn Zoya, Meenakshi Sethi, Vaarun Bhagat, Lavina Tandon, Shruthy Menon, Gautam Rode, Shivjyoti Rajput,Saqib Ayub, Daksh Ajit Singh, Saurav Khurana, Garvil Mohan, Manik Papneja, Debatamma Saha & others
