Director: Aditya Datt
Writers: Renzil D’Silva, Sameer Arora, Srinita Bhoumick, Rehan Khan, Venika Mitra
Cast: Gulshan Devaiah, Anurag Kashyap, Harleen Sethi, Saurabh Sachdeva, Aishwarya Sushmita
Number of episodes: 8 (dropping weekly)
Streaming on: Disney+ Hotstar
Adapted from a 2017 German show of the same name, Bad Cop is yet another dysfunctional marriage of mass entertainment and long-format storytelling. The day will come when showrunners realize that this tone and form are incompatible. The day will come when writers realize that it’s like forcing a T20 specialist to play Test cricket. But today is not that day. This review is based on the first 6 (out of 8) episodes provided, but you don’t need to know what happens to judge how ineffective the series is.
Bad Cop stars Gulshain Devaiah in a double role (his second after Vasan Bala’s Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, 2018) as, you guessed it, twin brothers named Karan and Arjun. Karan is a hassled inspector, Arjun is a hassled crook. The show opens with Arjun and his ‘bindaas’ girlfriend Kiki (Aishwarya Sushmita) trying to scam a man in a hotel only to get entangled in the murder of a famous journalist while escaping. They become the prime suspects. Arjun goes to estranged brother Karan for help, only to once again get caught up in a deadly shootout. Safe to say Arjun has the worst luck in the world.
