Crime Beat Cast/Actors: Saqib Saleem, Rahul Bhat, Sai Tamhankar, Rajesh Tailang, Saba Azad, Danish Husain, Vipin Sharma & Others
Crime Beat Director: Sudhir Mishra & Sanjeev Kaul
Crime Beat Release Date: 21st February, 2025
Crime Beat Available On: ZEE5
Crime Beat Released/ Available In Languages: Hindi
Crime Beat Number Of Episodes: 8
Crime Beat Episode Duration: 30 Minutes (Approx Each Episode)
Crime Beat Critic Review:
You’ve seen Broken News. You know how rival channels work, ethics versus TRPs.
You’ve seen Dhamaka and newsroom ambitions that prevail over national security.
You’ve seen Despatch, the print medium giving way to digital.
You’ve also seen umpteen movies and shows centred around a dreaded criminal, cops, journalists and politicians. You know that cops on the take, on the payroll of businessmen, ministers and opposition leaders, contribute to regular cinematic fodder.
The show begins with someone with a huge following stepping out. Binny Chaudhry has surrendered, scream assorted TV anchors. And Binny is shot.
The rest is a flashback to return to this moment at the end.
Sudhir Mishra who takes the credit as showrunner and director (along with Sanjeev Kaul), picks up a book titled The Price You Pay and proceeds to build Binny Chaudhry (Rahul Bhat) as an uncatchable criminal with hawala rackets, kidnappings and ransom money that he showers like confetti over Indirapuram, the place he grew up in Delhi.
Using more flashbacks to build equations between DCP Uday Kumar (Rajesh Tailang), newsroom biggie Aamir Akhtar (Danish Husain) and Binny, Sudhir-Sanjiv tell a messy story with so many characters that it confounds.
Caught in convoluted storytelling that must have Binny’s girlfriend Archana Pandey (Sai Tamhankar) feature in a lesbian kiss in a swimming pool and smooch a goon in a bedroom, nothing in the writing or direction fleshes out any character with clarity. None of Archana’s scenes, for instance, establish her as the master of disguise and a Machiavellian gangster which were her introductory credentials.
Flashbacks to a kidnap 15 years ago attempt to track the history between Rawat (Vipin Sharma), a politician (who must have a saffron touch), Binny, Aamir and the DCP.
On their trail is rookie journalist Abhishek Sinha (Saqib Saleem), dying to be on the crime beat.
His boss Aamir Akhtar gives him a job because he sees Abhishek’s “nose for news”.
Somewhere in the newsroom is also Maya (Saba Azad).
While crime plods on without a thrill, everybody in the newsroom hankers to be on Page One with seniors and juniors stealing one another’s stories and bylines.
By the end of it, Sudhir-Sanjiv are so confused that you end up not knowing what Binny Chaudhry, the Robin Hood of Indirapuram out to expose a huge scam, was all about. Was Binny a neta, a gangster, a social worker? What exactly were his crimes?
The few saving moments come from Rahul Bhat, recently seen delivering crisp, jailor-brand insensitivity in Black Warrant. Even if Binny is incomprehensible, there are flashes of a controlled confidence in Rahul’s performance. Sai Tamhankar has spunk but Archana, the heroine, is essentially around more for sensuality than for anything substantial. The rest of the cast, Saba Azad included, is used simply to fill in vacant spaces in the newsroom and in the police force. Is this really the Sudhir Mishra who directed award-worthy films like Serious Men (2020)?
Crime Beat – Watch Or Not?: Look for a more absorbing beat this weekend.
Crime Beat Review Score Rating: 2 out of 5 (i.e. 2/5)
Crime Beat Official Trailer:
Credits: ZEE5
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