Salt City(SonyLIV, 7 episodes)
Directed by Rishab Anupam Sahay
Rating: ****
With its top-heavy cast that reads like a who’s who of the OTT platform, Salt City could have easily toppled over . Much to our relief , Salt City stays on its feet for almost all of its seven episodes, giving us a dysfunctional family . But as that wise writer told us, every family has its own tragedy.So who is dysfunctional?
The Bajpai family travels with us to a heartbreaking revelation at the end. This is the second series this week after Amazon’s Suzhal in Tamil to address sexual abuse. In Salt City two very fine actresses Navni Parihar and Nivedita Bhattacharya get together to discuss this troublesome issue.
“How long are we going to let this(sex crimes) happen right under our nose?” Navnee asks.
Nivedita listens. We listen.
Salt City gets our attention.Outwardly it may seem like one more dysfunctional family. But what this series tells us is, there is no dysfunctional family. That every family and its problems are distinct. The story of the Bajpai family capitalizes on the fund of acting talent at their disposal.
Piyush Mishra gives his all to the role of the family head watching his dream team fall apart as one after the other his children move away.There is the youngest son Saurav(Divyendu Sharma) who is to the Bajpai family what Cordelia was to King Lear. Saurav may not be politically correct. But his heart is in the right place and though outwardly he keeps blundering in public Saurav has more integrity than the Bajpais’ other children.
There is a great deal of sincerity in the conceptualization and portrayal of the characters. However the ending could have been less gloomy. We are left looking at a family that seemed happy at the beginning but is are now splintered and despondent.
