In Vishal Bhardwaj we trust. The filmmaker’s recent works, Mumbai Dragon in the anthology series Modern Love: Mumbai (2022) or the iPhone-shot short Fursat (2023) had the artist’s creative signature but were sporadically impressive. With his mouthful OTT series debut Charlie Chopra & The Mystery of Solang Valley, Bhardwaj returns to sprawling snowed slopes after Haider (2014). He returns to literature adaptations after 2018’s explosive Pataakha (based on Charan Singh Pathik’s short story Do Behnein). Basically, Charlie Chopra… is Bhardwaj’s return to form. A batsman finally gets to sweep on his home ground.
Cast: Wamiqa Gabbi, Priyanshu Painyuli, Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah, Vivaan Shah, Imaad Shah, Neena Gupta and Lara Dutta
Director: Vishal Bhardwaj
Streamer: SonyLIV
The series is an adaptation of the 1931 Agatha Christie book The Sittaford Mystery (originally titled The Murder at Hazelmoor). More than adapting, the director ably moulds the original story in his frame. If you have read the whodunit, you can either nitpick the plot modifications or marvel at how Bhardwaj retains the essence of the written word on a visual medium. The chief change would be taking the falsely accused’s fiancée Emily Trefusis, an incidental character in the book, and putting it in the forefront as the amateur detective Charlie Chopra.
The premise might be considered a hackneyed murder mystery. A rich man is killed and money can be the motive for everybody around him. Viewers would be reminded of the Knives Out series. Charlie Chopra… opens with a séance being conducted at a homey house party in snowy Solang. After a possessed girl foretells ex-Brigadier Rawat’s (Gulshan Grover) murder, his close friend Colonel Barua (Baharul Islam), to allay his fears, decides to walk in a snowstorm to Manali where the Brigadier lives. The ex-soldier is found splayed on the floor, a glass bottle of honey sticking out of his nape. A hotel room key at the crime scene incriminates the Brigadier’s timid nephew Jimmy Nautiyal (Vivaan Shah). On the case is Jimmy’s fiancée Charulata (Charlie) Chopra (an arresting Wamiqa Gabbi), who has got sleuthing skills in her genes (In her words: “My mother was Punjab’s ‘naamcheen’ (famous) detective”). Investigation reveals that Brigadier Rawat was a rude miser (he is ironically first-named Meherbaan) who was sitting on a fortune. His untimely death would have been beneficial to his “greedy” family. The suspects are lined up: Brigadier’s brother Mohan Rawat (Lalit Parimoo) and his wife Janki (Neena Gupta) who are in need of funds for their son’s kidney transplant, the ex-soldiers’ niece Saloni (Paoli Dam) and her husband, broke pulp fiction author Manas (Chandan Roy Sanyal), Saloni and Jimmy’s shady brother Billu (Imaad Shah), Brigadier’s nosy tenant Ms Bharucha (Ratna Pathak Shah) and the mysterious mother-daughter Wilayat and Waseema Hussain (Lara Dutta and Bhagyashree Tarke).
Bingeing Charlie Chopra… gives the same comfort as cosying up with a mystery novel on a wintry morning. But it’s not the curiosity for the killer that turns the page (you might guess it if you look closely enough), more so it is the eccentricities of the narrator. Wamiqa’s Charlie frequently breaks the fourth wall, sometimes for a flowery abuse in Punjabi, otherwise for letting us in on a secret with just her wide, telling eyes. The character of Charlie, at times, feels like a mishmash of Fleabag and Taani (From Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, 2008) but whenever the mystery starts thinning, Wamiqa’s quirk and charm spills out of the screen and pulls you back in.
For Christie connoisseurs the plot in itself might be predictable, the reveals dismissive, but what Bhardwaj aces at is weaving a mood. He gets ample aid from Tassaduq Hussain’s picturesquely greyish, icy frames (the cinematographer collaborated with him previously on Omkara, 2006 and Kaminey, 2009) and also from Sunidhi Chauhan’s haunting voice. Charlie Chopra… starts off as a playful mystery but soon gives glimpses of a deeper anguish when the protagonist’s parental history is delved into. In between the red herrings, the suspects, the alibis, the clues and breaking the fourth wall, Bhardwaj slips into his politics. A suspicious cook turns out to be a Bangladeshi refugee, who was one day asked to show his papers. A resourceful reporter is accused of “cheating an entire nation for TRP.” When people can’t, characters speak up.
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