Vikramaditya Motwane is back with another intellectually stimulating story, the latest in his collaboration with Netflix (he previously created Netflix India’s first streaming original series Sacred Games and wrote and directed last year’s film CTRL). This latest series is an adaptation of the 2019 non-fiction book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury, based on Gupta’s real life experience.
Opening Shot: A timid young man enters a room to interview for a job with the police. After hounding him for his stature and questioning why he wants the job, he explains that this was the only job available, but he’s also the only candidate qualified for it. He’s hired.
The Gist: Sunil Kumar Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) is a rookie officer in the notoriously difficult Tihar Jail in Delhi, aiming to approach his new role with honor. But soon he finds that there is corruption across the prison complex, as prison guards work with the various inmate gangs to smuggle drugs and alcohol in and out for a profit. The factions, as told to Gupta, are: the Tyagi Gang, which handles the lucrative drug trade; the Rana gang, who coordinates alcohol trade and are eyeing a collaboration with the Tyagis; and the Sardar group, much less a gang and rather a group of Sikhis that chooses to keep to themselves.
As Gupta is learning the ropes, he also meets serial killer Charles Sobhraj who is given special treatment while incarcerated because he has blackmailed all of the officials. Things come to a head in the pilot when the Home Minister drops into the jail and witnesses a drunk inmate. The story lands in the paper and Gupta is briefly suspended. When he returns, he’ll have to battle his morals and his conscience in order to keep the job that puts food on his family’s table.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If you’re a fan of Motwane’s other works, namely Sacred Games, this series will be up your alley.
Our Take: Delhi’s crime and the systems around it are an easy place to find compelling stories (just ask the eponymous Emmy-nominated Delhi Crime series). Black Warrant is no different, once again taking a true story and dramatizing it for the screen.
Motwane, the mastermind behind the adaptation, has emerged as an arbiter of these types of stories. Under his writing (co-written with Satyanshu Singh) and direction, Black Warrant stylishly and systematically reveals the corruption just under the surface of the Tihar Jail. The characters are drawn sharply immediately, dropping us into the dog-eat-dog world at every level of Tihar from the very start.
Motwane has a knack for pulling convincing performances from his cast, and Black Warrant is no different. From lead Zahan Kapoor to his two-faced boss played by Rahul Bhat, the cast largely makes a meal out of the roles. Even Sidhant Gupta’s slimy portrayal of Sobhraj, full of stilted pronunciations and a general air of superiority, works in an unsettling setting like Tihar. Even the moody score by Ajay Jayanthi provides a tense and strange feeling for the series, mirroring the horrors happening within the prison complex.
Black Warrant almost derails itself by fussing over romantic plotlines that seem to have been added purely for drama’s sake (it is TV, after all) as well as a wide range of notable prisoners pulled from India’s real headlines that affect the show’s pacing, but ultimately the co-writers are able to ground the story. And with only seven episodes, this is worthy of being your next binge.
Sex and Skin: There’s some very brief nudity, but nothing to be too worried about.
Parting Shot: A suspended Gupta picks up the morning newspaper to find that Tihar has scheduled its first hanging in five years.
Sleeper Star: Rahul Bhat as DSP Rajesh Tomar is the exact kind of menacing required for a corrupt cop. From the way he eyes Gupta with skepticism to the ferocity he exudes while lying to save his own back, Bhat doesn’t back down from fully committing.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Compassion, trust, hope…these bookish concepts don’t mean squat in Tihar,” DSP Tomar explains to newbie Gupta. “Everyone here is a snake. Some bite, and some get bitten.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. This is a good one for fans of crime dramas.
Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, ELLE.com, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.
