The series starring Pankaj Tripathi and Shweta Basu Prasad has been directed by Rohan Sippy and produced by Applause Entertainment in association with BBC Studios.
This show is so engrossing that I am now impatient to watch its predecessor, âCriminal Justiceâ (Season One) whenever I have time to spare: I had missed it. This is a wonderful amalgam of drama, social message, humor and courtroom thrills and twists. The 8-episode show also gets into the grimy truth of under-trials in jails and also hints at excesses committed by seemingly normal husbandsâso what is the point that makes their actions questionable, illegal, punishable by law, or otherwise?
The dicey question starts at home for counsel Madhav Mishra (Pankaj Tripathi), summoned from his wedding night to defend Anuradha Chandra (Kirti Kulhari), who has stabbed her husband with daughter Rhea (Adrija Sinha) as a seeming eyewitness. He leaves his devoted wife in the small town and leaves for Mumbai, without bothering about her feelings and later not even communicating with her.
The beats of
Criminal Justice are familiar. Like the first season, Season 2 also operates as a gripping police/legal procedural, effectively chronicles life within the filthy confines of prison and culminates in a gritty courtroom drama. But the tagline of this season, ‘Behind Closed Doors’, is telling, ripping the veil off a murder spurred on by a motive that is most often shoved under the carpet, or at best, whispered behind closed doors.
c, whose prowess in cracking open clues was underestimated in Season 1, and worked in his favour. He walks in late, into what is dismissed as an ‘open and shut case’. The accused is Anuradha Chandra (Kirti Kulhari), a mother of a pre-teen who has given herself up and confessed to stabbing her husband Bikram Chandra (Jisshu Sengupta, impactful in a short role) one night. Anu, undergoing psychiatric care, is quickly labelled as someone who acted with palpable motive and with no provocation, and Bikram, himself a hotshot lawyer with a sque
Kirti Kulhari in Criminal Justice: Behind Closed Doors (2020) | Applause Entertainment/BBC Studios/Disney+ Hotstar
Criminal Justice: Behind Closed Doors is a slow burn by design. The web series revolves around a woman who has suffered gaslighting for so long, she can barely begin to confront the truth of what has been done to her.
Anu (Kirti Kulhari) is married to the highly respected and affluent Mumbai lawyer Bikram (Jisshu Sengupta). His stealthy and sinister ways suggest that he isn’t the “great guy” or the “gem of a person” that he is described to be. Anu’s jangly behaviour indicates that she is at the very tip of the edge. She does fall over, grievously injuring Bikram by driving a knife into his belly.