Jazz City series reviewCast: Arifin Shuvoo, Sauraseni Maitra, Shantanu Ghatak, Aniruddha Gupta, Sayandeep Sen, Shreya Bhattacharya, Shataf FigarCreator: Soumik SenWhere to watch: SonyLivStar rating: ★★
Sometimes ambition is not enough. Even good intent is not enough to salvage a story that does not know its own pulse. Such is the case with the new SonyLiv series Jazz City.
Spread across 10 hour-long episodes, Jazz City starts off with little force. I was waiting for the characters to land, the plot points to draw the line, and the tone to settle down. But it never took off in the first place.
We are taken back to 1971, ahead of the Bangladesh Liberation War- a rather overused and overfed era in long-format storytelling at this point in time. We meet a club owner in Calcutta, the young and handsome Jimmy Roy (Arifin Shuvoo), who will be reluctantly drawn into the revolutionary movement, where he must help in protecting three Bangladeshi students who are on the run from Pakistani military officials.
The scenes lack authenticity and feel unbearably staged- filled with stiff dialogues and unnecessarily laid-back staging. There are no elaborations where they are most needed, no surprises when the characters circle back on their impulses, and no introspections on what lies at the heart of this mix.
The first episode falls flat on several grounds, as none of the characters pulls back on the connecting thread and come off as inconsequential set-pieces hovering around the large sets.
Only the set and costume design add much-needed texture and focus to the narrative, which begins to test the viewer's patience after the first few episodes. Jazz City means well, but how long can it survive just on the basis of that? It is a show that sinks under its own weight and is never fully able to commit to the danger, restlessness, and anxiety of a troubled socio-political climate.
