Revisiting the good old days of Doordarshan yet again, when it wasn’t exactly a boring cousin of the satellite channels like ZeeTv or mtv. One genre that has intrigued viewers over the years is suspense murder mysteries. With a common base of a chilling murder committed and then a detective is summoned to investigate. Sometimes it’s the detective who coincidentally ends up being at the place of the crime, convenient isn’t it? But that’s what crime genre lovers have loved all these years. From Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to our very own Byomkesh Bakshi and the hot selling detective novels featuring Kaala Pahad and Dhananjay, we’ve had an amazing range of entertaining investigators, here’s a quick revisit to five detective serials from the golden days of Doordarshan.
Termed and credited as India’s first detective series on television, though I’m unsure if it’s true, but certainly an engaging and thrilling series. With generous humour added to give it a black comedy feel and an outstanding performance by a poker faced Pankaj Kapur who munches on carrots this was a runaway success directed by Pankaj Parasher. Remember the pigtailed Sushmeeta Mukherjee as Karamchand’s hare brained assistant Kitty?
Veteran actor Parikshit Sahni was roped in to play the titular role of Barrister Vinod, hugely inspired by Perry Mason series. Sahni played a righteous principled lawyer who gets deep necked into the minutest intricacies of the crime to defend the innocent and punish the guilty. Jagdish Raj typecast in an inspector’s role along with Neelam Mehra, Vinod Sharma and others lend mysterious company in this court based crime series.
Directed by Basu Chatterji this remains one of the many attempts to recreate the world famous Bengali detective Byomkesh Bakshi on celluloid. This was certainly a decent, well conceptualised and entertaining attempt. Chatterji’s brilliant handling of the various murder cases across the episodes keeps you engrossed to find out the identity of the real culprit. Rajit Kapur as Satyanveshi and K K Raina as Ajit were a delight to watch. Veteran Utpal Dutt appeared in one episode delivering an inspiring performance.
By the 90s DD had come of age and was handling bold and sensational episodes dealing with real life crime stories sourced from cbi files. Shekhar Suman who had freshly achieved superstardom on television in comical roles tried a challenging serious avatar playing a reporter investigating crime. From drug peddling to honor killing this series showcased some of the most intriguing and sensational crime stories of those days. Film stars like Raj Kiran(his final show) and Amala appeared in few episodes.
Marvellous! That’s what one can call this brilliantly presented detective series helmed by Karan Razdan. Veteran actor film maker Goldie aka Vijay Anand played the charming smooth operating Sam Dsilva, a Bombay based detective who along with his adorable assistant Gopi(Saurabh Shukla) track down murderers after a well planned investigation. Artists like Divya Seth, Pallavi Joshi, Prithvi, Kitu Gidwani, Navni Parihar(her episode is widely considered the scariest and best), Sudhir and others played important roles in the episodes.
Gone are those days, and gone are those detectives! For an entire viewership who gets an adrenaline rush by watching women transforming to Naagins and Makhkhis there’s certainly no place for real time detectives today.
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