Review of 'Bard of Blood' web series

With an ever-increasing surge in content consumption across digital platforms, it is but natural the biggies of Hindi cinema have accelerated their moves towards capturing a slice of this new pie in the market. Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment gets into action mode with its offering 'Bard of Blood', produced by his wife Gauri Khan and directed by Ribhu Dasgupta, an erstwhile assistant of Anurag Kashyap, which premiered across the world on Netflix on September 27.

This web series was awaited because it had a few notable names, the prominent among them being Emraan Hashmi, who has been having a lacklustre time in Hindi cinema, of late. Basing itself on the 2015 novel with the same title, written by Bilal Siddiqui, it has a run time of seven episodes.

A fascinating theme, as it is, with an Indo-Pak background, this spy thriller takes off steadily when the hero, an out-of-favour agent, overrides the bosses and goes about doing more than what is required in enemy territory. His concern is to free the Indian hostages who are in Balochistan and for this, he has another lady officer, the sultry Sobhita Dulipala for company, literally and professionally. At the enemy location, he is joined by an undercover agent, Vineet Kumar Singh, who is desperate to get back to home country to reunite with his family and look after his father.

The author packs in enough to keep it from being uni-dimensional as an open and shut case. He brings in a romantic angle to the hero's stressed out life when he is shown falling in love with the rebel Balochi leader's daughter(Kirti Kulhari), who is fighting Pakistan for independence. The internecine family politics of the former impacts the lives of all concerned and also that of the enemies who are shown constantly closing in on Hashmi and his team.

Spread over seven episodes, despite a superhero dimension to Hashmi, who is shown always winning against the plotting and scheming rivals, the digital offering by Dasgupta has a keen attention to detail and good production values. It is an interesting watch and like every other web series production, this one too ends with a twist at the end to make the viewers await the next season.