Project: Escaype Live
Ratings: 3.5 stars
Escaype Live, helmed by Siddharth Kumar Tewary, derives right on the path that divides the parameters of realism and performance. What it keeps ricocheting on is the uncalled frenzy of the human conscience, that seeks validation not knowing the absolute of it. With conceivable and plausible plots and amazing intimidating character build-ups, Escaype Live truly falls on its calculated terms to bring up the outlay of ‘Instant fame’ and anyone with a smartphone in hand could be a star!
Starting on some basic curls to set up the entire storyline. A tech company (Escaype Live) announces a contest between the users and anyone who would get the maximum diamonds from their followers would win 3 crores. Which stimulates complete chaos and dilemma soon as the episodes unveil further. What’s more, the story sets its ground on several other hard-hitting toxic factors like ‘Gender discrimination’, ‘Consent’, ‘women objectification’, ‘manipulation’, ‘Caste discrimination’ and more.
Footing on when the tops of the tech company Ravi and Gia (Javed Jaaferi and Walushca D’Souza) show no clemency to the users, except for their business. Ravi explaining a convincing strategy to the makers, ‘rags to riches’ and intentionally manipulating the numbers of diamonds that the users get, yet asserting to the data moderators that the application is ‘computer controlled’ is where we get a concrete taste of how the biggies on the board treat ‘low class’ and ‘poverty’ to get their own rationale successful. Then again Gia who is a mother to a minor girl easily shreds off Krishna’s (Siddharth) request to not get Dance Rani (Aadyaa Sharma), an underprivileged girl from Jaisalmer, on Faceoff with ‘Fetish Girl’ (Plabita Borthakur).
While the stellar Siddharth and Jaaved Jaaferi starrer almost gets you in the groove, with the most persuasive delve by Sumedh Mudgalkar (Prankster Darkie) and Rohit Chandel (Meena), the show gets a bit debilitating in the row with the unnecessary inclusions right from the start, and too much that sometimes it looks too ‘over the top’ and ‘bizarre’.
However, while the existential whimsical theories got right on its verge, giving us a hard time, with slow unveils of the characters and their background check, it seems Tewary managed to rescue it with his passionate will to show the sunken side of online media and validation madness, with heavy grim background music and exceptional setting and treatment of the setting and props.
It’s an all-in-all to binge upon! Seven of its nine episodes were released on 20th May, and we suggest that it be a worthy binge for the weekend!
IWMBuzz rates the series 3.5 out of 5 stars.