Kafas review: SonyLIV's newest offering looks like a preachy Bollywood film that's turned into a web series!

Kafas review: The Sharman Joshi and Mona Singh starrer seems either afraid and hesitant or uninterested to follow a much darker route that the concept offers!

Kafas review: Kafas in Urdu means ‘a cage’ and SonyLIV’s new show tries to capture the feeling of being trapped inside a trap as well as inside one’s own mind. It’s adapted from the British TV show ‘Dark Money’ which is about how a family deals with the abuse of a child by a highly reputed film producer. Following a similar plot line, Kafas does justice to its tagline ‘Nahi Bol Paynege, Paise Liye Hai‘ because it literally feels like that show can’t convey what it wants to as if the makers also had black tape on them. One thing is for sure it doesn’t make you judge the characters who are involved in this chaotic mess of guilt and regret because it’s too bland and basic to make you feel anything, even for its darker elements.

Based on the theme of how wealth and power go hand-in-hand with each other which makes having a moral conscience and dreams a luxurious lifestyle that most can’t afford especially the middle class, Kafas wants to ask you the most basic questions – If you’re the middle class who dreams a dream and to fulfill it you have to pay a small price, would you do it? Would you take money for your silence against child abuse if the life you want is a cheque away from your own nightmare-like life? And if you do, can that dreamy life still feel like what you wanted? But to disappointment, it all remained in theory as nothing gets converted in execution. This makes me want to watch the show from which this is adapted. Because when it’s all given how can everything go this wrong (but if Adipurush can exist what else can we really say)?! 

Anyways, dealing with this entirety of dilemma is the family of vashishts. Raghav (Sharman Joshi), a cinema theatre manager, and Seema (Mona Singh), who works at a small parlor with their two kids- Sunny (Mikail Gandhi) and Shreya (Tejasvi Singh Ahlawat), aspiring actors. This couple’s life turns upside down when Vikram Bajaj (Vivan Bhatena), a superstar, exploits their son, who is on the verge of debuting in the biggest Bollywood film of the year (which reminded me of Bloody Daddy). And turns their rainbow-colored opportunity into a traumatic never-ending nightmare. I liked the idea that the show tries to present – how in real life there are no superdads or supermoms, just human beings, who have no idea what they are doing half the time and depend on trial-and-error methods because they’re dealing with their own baggage while trying to parent. But in order to humanise these parents, Kafas lost the whole point of what it’s dealing with. It couldn’t talk about how parents push the burden of their unfulfilled aspirations on their children nor about how these kids crack under that pressure.

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With immoral parents as protagonists who take the money to keep quiet about their son’s abuse which troubles them later is a wasted opportunity in this limited series created by Sahil Sangha. Because it treats the heavy subject matter at hand like a preachy Bollywood film or like a WhatsApp forward that is discussed at the table at home. Kafas has much more than it can handle on its plate! From post-trauma of sexual abuse in children, troubles of a second marriage, marital issues, the tales of a struggling actor, the film industry’s reality, cracking under guilt and pressure, to sibling jealousy, parental neglect, and more but they are all brushed off instead of being carefully crafted or structurally explored. Even with drastic twists at the end of every episode, the show leaves you feeling high and dry where you are neither too excited nor too involved. 

Now that is the thing when the script is so bleh where will the actor draw from? Yet there are some who manage to salvage what is lacking but they are not here! I could see why Mukesh Chhabra chose Sharman Joshi, Mona Singh, and the others because they all have a certain innocence within them where immorality could be a shock. But it’s more of a shock for us to see how good actors can perform badly too! It was like each one of them was handed a chit with one note of advice of expression on it and all of them diligently followed. No wonder Chhabra thought of casting himself as well because in a pool of not-so-good acting who will notice him?! The only person who could drive something was Vivan even if he was essayed on old-school Bollywood villains. 

The problem with Kafas is that it wants to be everything just doesn’t know how to! From a reality check about how the dark side of the film industry works (filled with predators, leeches, pedophiles) to addressing the trauma of sexual abuse that a child experiences and also immoral middle-class parents who are just trying to make it in this world while keeping intact their relations with each other and their children. I wish I could say it’s so bad it’s not good at all, but it’s actually worse because it leaves you with nothing. Even an ad campaign on this could have been a better idea! Its not-so-serious and negligent attitude about itself drives the series by the end to a point where its protagonists literally have to spell out the show’s message. What a bummer!

Kafas is currently streaming on SonyLIV!

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