Two eagerly awaited trailers hit the internet on May 14. While Aamir’s drunken-basketball-coach-gets-a-stab-at-redemption act in Sitaare Zameen Par seems passably interesting, Applause Entertainment’s Criminal Justice seems to get better, more gripping with each season.
The trailer of Season 4 leaves us gasping for breath: yes, it is so tightly knit, and the presentation within the given format of fleeting glances is formidably taut.
Pankaj Tripathi wallows in the smug sameness of the defence lawyer Madhav Mishra’s characterisation. But it is his adversary Mita Vashisht whose screen presence never fails to create a riveting impact.
Applause Entertainment deserves a round of applause for going into Season 4 of their legal drama without fumbling over the plotting, characterization, or, most crucially, the red herrings. I must say Pankaj Tripathi grows organically into his lawyer’s role with every season. He imparts a refreshing casualness, not to be mistaken for nonchalance, to his part.
So, how does Season 4 of Criminal Justice compare with the first three seasons? Going by the trailer, I would say the new season manages to go beyond the other seasons in the pursuit of an engaging thriller perched on the legal theme.
When the first season of Criminal Justice came to us in 2018, I was hooked. This, despite having seen the BBC series of the same name and also the HBO film The Night Of, in which Riz Ahmed played the cabbie who ends up in bed with a troubled female passenger and finds her dead next to him the next morning.
The always-interesting Vikrant Massey slipped into Riz Ahmed’s role, played by Ben Whishaw in the original BBC series. All three were extraordinary in portraying the traumatised murder accused who is a victim. We already knew the plot. But we wanted to see how the adaptation had moved away from the original BBC series and the HBO mini-series.
Three seasons in, at the cusp of Season 4, Criminal Justice: A Family Matter doesn’t seem to fall short of expectations. How can it, when the redoubtable Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub stands accused of murder? There has to be more to this crime than meets the eye.
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