The Railway Men (Netflix, 4 Episodes)
Rating: ***
An otherwise laudable effort to reconstruct the events before and during the biggest chemical catastrophe in the world, The Railway Men suffers from an overload of dramatized fictional accounts of what could have happened during the crucial hours before and after the gas leakage, rather than what actually did. This creates a major bifurcation between what the series intends to do and what it actually achieves.
What remains intact in spite of the excessive melodrama is the valour of the four “railway men” Rati Pandey(R Madhavan),Iftikhar Siddiqui(K K Menon), Imaad Riaz(Babil Khan) and Balwant Yadav(Divyenndu Sharma). These are rounded well- played characters, but suffer from varying degrees of simulated filmy heroism.
The filminess does get in the way, especially at a juncture like the one where a young defeated athlete girl picks up the gasping bride and sprints for a train,or worse still,a secret telephonic connection between Madhavan’s character and, surprise, Juhi Chawla as a busybody bureaucrat who fumes in public and smokes in private.
These highly avoidable garnishings miraculously leave the powerful core story untouched. The principal actors do well for themselves, in spite of the high-pitched almost shrieking tone of the storytelling. Though director Shiv Rawail shows promise in his directorial debut he would be well advised to remember that one needn’t shout to be heard.
The Railway Men goes offtrack at many places but remains true to its purpose of reopening wounds that never healed. The four episodes ensure the Railway Men do not get smoke breaks.