Dabba Cartel Cast/Actors: Shabana Azmi, Jyothika, Jisshu Sengupta, Nimisha Sajayan, Gajraj Rao, Sai Tamhankar, Shalini Pandey, Anjali Anand, Sushmita Mukherjee, Lilette Dubey, Sunil Grover, Bhupendra Jadawat & Others.
Dabba Cartel Director: Hitesh Bhatia
Dabba Cartel Creator: Gaurav Kapur & Shibani Akhtar
Dabba Cartel Production Company: Excel Entertainment
Dabba Cartel Release Date: 28th February, 2025
Dabba Cartel Available On: Netflix
Dabba Cartel Released/Available In Languages: Hindi
Dabba Cartel Number Of Episodes: 7
Dabba Cartel Episode Duration: 45 Minutes (Approx Each Episode)
Dabba Cartel Critic Review:
It’s a motley bunch of characters.
Hari (Bhupendra Jadawat) wants a posting in Germany. Wife Raji (Shalini Pandey) and he pretty much talk of Germany more than anything else. Hari’s mother, the Gujarati saree-clad Ba (Shabana Azmi) is more the onlooker than a participant. Only the book she’s reading ‘Poisonous Shadow’ is at odds with who she seems to be.
Ravi’s harried boss Shankar (Jisshu Sengupta) makes a stylish, upper crust couple with wife Varuna (Jyothika). Her ambitious garment venture ‘Sitara’ is fashionably losing money. She does seem the nose-in-the-air rich man’s wife living it up on husband’s funds.
Shankar and Ravi are a part of the Viva Life building and company, a pharma company that’s been dodgy with a now-banned product called Modella.
Varuna’s housemaid is Mala (Nimisha Sajayan) with her own domestic issues including a man who uses her as carrier for petty drug peddling.
In and out is broker Shahida (Anjali Anand).
Nosey harridan Tejaswi Tijori (Sushmita Mukherjee) is always on the prowl. Ready for a fight. Ready for gossip.
Like a hound that’s scented blood, on the Modella and opioids trail is officer Ajit Pathak (Gajraj Rao). At first reluctant to have a woman police officer for a partner, he soon warms up to the no-nonsense Preeti (Sai Tamhankar). Together, they plot to collect evidence from everywhere, Amritsar and Delhi included, even if Pathak has higher-ups unwilling to make reimbursements and ready to trip his investigations.
Amidst the clear-cut characterisations and situations is Raji’s Tiffins, a dabba service that also packs small packets of ‘energisers’ for husbands.
Director Hitesh Bhatia and a half-a-dozen writers bring Ba Sheila to the fore. The Shabana Azmi of Godmother (1999), which fetched her a National Award, is back in form as she steps into daughter-in-law Raji’s dabba service.
Raji’s dabbas become unrecognisable as the business grows into a sprawling drug network of peddling with Ba as the don. She can cross swords with the best of goondas without fear, she can handle any situation without losing her calm.
Taking several twists, what emerge are relationships. Raji with her mother-in-law who’s unstoppable, having tasted blood once again. Mala who can’t bear to be looked down upon, especially by Varuna. They’re equals now, not employer and maid, can’t Varuna get it?
Varuna and Shankar – what did he do to quash Varuna’s career when she was better qualified than him for a job? He must get his comeuppance.
And the inescapable lesbian angle – broker Shahida and cop Preeti. There’s even a hint between Ba Sheila and Meenakshi (Lilette Dubey), her firm friend from the past.
By the time you watch equations take a bashing with Pathak and Preeti never far behind and the drug mafia culminating in kidnap, arm twisting and murder in the sprawling farm of masala king Chacko (Sunil Grover), you’ve had your fill of the underworld and the dabba ladies.
Equations have a way of settling down after a dramatic, sometimes over the top high. But the pregnant Raji can’t wash away what she’s been through.
Keeping it going is a super BG score mixing words from Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi.
The ladies are in peak form with the always-reliable Shabana Azmi, Jyothika, Nimisha Sajayan (seen in this week’s Crazxy too), Sai Tamhankar, the so-pretty Shalini Pandey and Anjali Anand, followed byJisshu Sengupta and Sunil Grover.
It is a ladies first theme.
And Ba is back, unstoppable again.
Brace yourself for another season.
Dabba Cartel – Watch Or Not?: Although there have been other women-in-the-narco-trade shows like Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo, this has its own time-pass watchability.
Dabba Cartel Review Score Rating: 3.5 out of 5 (i.e. 3.5/5)
Dabba Cartel Official Trailer:
Credits: Netflix
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