Guilty Minds, created and directed by Shefali Bhushan with Jayant Digambar Samalkar as co-director, is centered on a principled woman lawyer in Delhi, Kashaf Quaze (Shriya Pilgaonkar), intertwining her personal and professional experiences. Given the stereotypical representations of Muslim characters, particularly Muslim women, on screen, Kashaf comes across as a breath of fresh air. She’s neither a terrorist in training nor an oppressed woman looking to be ‘liberated’ from her burqa. Just the ordinariness of her character is startling when it shouldn’t be.
The first season of the web series, spread over 10 episodes of around 50 minutes each, tracks Kashaf’s cases that range from a woman actor who makes a #MeToo allegation against a supposedly feminist director to a security officer in a Naxal area whose murder is passed off as a suicide. She is frequently pitted against Deepak Rana (Varun Mitra), a hotshot lawyer from humble beginnings who works for a corporate firm run by the Khanna family. Kashaf and Deepak are friends from law school, and share an off-on romantic relationship that is hard to pin down. Shefali does well not to fit them into boxes; Kashaf might be the morally upright lawyer between the two, but she also comes from a long line of lawyers and judges (Shefali herself comes from a similar family; she’s former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan’s daughter and Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bushan’s sister), making her extremely privileged. Deepak, on the other hand, works by his own set of principles that strays into the grey, and comes from a middle class family in Himachal Pradesh. Both the actors share a mature, easygoing chemistry that is believable, though it sometimes seems like a stretch that they work so many cases either together or on opposite sides.
Fans of the Perry Mason books may recall the dashing lawyer’s flirtations with his secretary Della Street. Courtroom dramas have traditionally revolved around male protagonists, with women only appearing as ‘romantic interest’ to provide some sexual tension to the plot or as clients and perpetrators. In a role reversal of sorts, Guilty Minds puts Kashaf at the heart of the series, bringing in Deepak mostly to ‘sex it up’.
At first, it appears that Guilty Minds is just going to be about the unique cases that come Kashaf’s way, and it takes a few episodes for the series to hook the viewer. The episodes begin with a prologue that leads into the case, giving us an idea of what is to follow. Some of these are better written and structured than the others (I liked the one with CTO Lata who is fired from her own company much more than the episode with the 19-year-old gamer, for instance), and you may feel your interest faltering. Kashaf doesn’t always win a case but the storytelling sometimes looks too glib, and this perhaps has to do with the format of a web series itself. You end up predicting when exactly a ‘discovery’ in the case is going to happen, how many more twists and turns can be expected, and when the judgment is going to be pronounced, based on how much time is left in the episode. Further, since the episodes don’t conclude on a cliffhanger moment but with the ends neatly tied up, you may not feel the urge to binge watch. But gradually, Shefali builds a frame story that is rewarding if you stay with the series: a 15-year-old murder case in Deepak’s hometown that is also connected to Kashaf.
The series benefits from its cast of supporting characters. Kashaf’s partner in their ‘for the people’ law firm is Vandana (Sugandha Garg), a lesbian woman who lives with her Bengali girlfriend. While Vandana barely argues a case in the first few episodes, she gets a story arc of her own in the subsequent ones. The Khanna siblings, Shubrat (Pranay Pachauri) and Shubhangi (Namrata Sheth), share different relationships with Deepak. While Shubrat can’t stand him, Shubhangi is attracted to him. Shubhangi can probably be categorised as the ‘other woman’, but Shefali thankfully does not vilify her. Shubhangi is, in fact, very much like Kashaf; dedicated to her work and willing to go against her powerful family for the sake of her beliefs. Still, she lacks Kashaf’s confidence and the diffidence written into her role makes her a vulnerable character that we like. The camera reflects the writing; in one scene, Shubangi is in a swimming pool with Deepak, and she’s dressed in a bikini. She’s insecure about his equation with Kashaf and in mainstream cinema, this would be the cue for her to seduce him, with the camera roving over her body. But the camera merely casts this scene as an ordinary conversation between the two, with a flippant Deepak and a confused Shubangi.
Ria Singh (Diksha Juneja), a journalist who is dating Shubrat, also gets something substantial to do in the latter half of the series. By refusing to categorise the women as good/bad, vamp/pure, Guilty Minds offers more surprises by way of characterisation than the cases themselves. I do wish though that Shefali explores Kashaf’s character more in the second season; does she always have to be SO ethical to the point of annoying? How about some texture to the vanilla surface? Veteran actors Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Satish Kapoor add heft to the cast, with interesting cameos by Suchitra Krishnamoorthy, Shakti Kapoor, and others.
The genre might be called ‘courtroom drama’ but in reality, the emotional, overreaching arguments we see on screen accompanied with rousing background music are a far cry from the staid proceedings in the court. The courtroom scenes in Guilty Minds look realistic, and though the judges only have a small role to play, they make a mark. The pleasant judge who loses himself in music in the copyright case, for instance, or the hilarious mediator who keeps explaining what one party is saying to the other. It’s the ability of the script to capture such little things from the court that keep the series alive.
Guilty Minds may not be immediately engrossing but it does grow on you, paving way for a second season that will, hopefully, bring more complexity to the storyline as well as its lead protagonist.
The series is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.