Thironthoram Dude

It has been a while since a quality British thriller hit the small screen and the trailer of  Bodyguard (2018)  suggested that the wait might go on for a little longer. Bodyguard, starring  Richard Madden  (David Budd) and  Keeley Hawes  (Home Secretary Julia Montague) was griping from the word go. A fantastic opening episode introduces us to the Special Protection Office David Budd, through a tense, brilliantly acted out sequence of a terror attempt in a train. The traumatized war veteran is assigned the duty of Special Protection Officer of the highly volatile, yet motivated Home Secretary Julia Montague whose controversial comments earn her both high praise as well as powerful enemies. The acting by all the supporting cast including, but not limited to  Sophie Rundle ,  Ash Tandon ,  Nina Toussaint-White   and  Anjli Mohindra  is brilliant to say the least. The series is edge of the seat stuff. If one is willing to ...

I wouldn't call myself a sucker for the genre 'horror', nor am I usually inclined to get started on a series if its anything but a thriller. The trailer was interesting yet it was not that enticing. This is why  The Haunting of Hill House  (A Netflix Original) haunted and thrilled me in so many levels. Every aspect of the series, from the writing, cast, background music, cinematography, sets and story are off the charts and is oozing with class. Without doubt the series turned out to be one of the best Horror series I ever saw. From the moment the series kicked off,  Mike Flanagan  lets us dissect and judge the lives of 7 individuals through an elaborate mixture of moments from the past and present, all leading to the Hill House. The series keeps alternating between the two timelines surrounding the 'Crain' Family. One where the five siblings and their parents are new to the Hill House and the second where the siblings are all grown up and are now brought back to...

Lilyhammer  is a fabulous binge-worthy comedy/crime series that popped up in my Netflix feed out of the blue. It starts with the New York mobster and second-in-command,    Frank Tagliano  ( Steven Van Zandt ) getting in line of the cross-hair, when the chief dies and the brother takes over the Mafia. Frank’s dog gets killed and he escapes by the skin of his teeth and before going all  John Wick  on the perpetrators he decides to do the sensible thing and turn States witness. In return he gets to choose any new identity anywhere in the world. However, he chose to go to Lilyhammer, Norway, as he loved the place when he saw the 94 Winter Olympics on TV and thus begins the adventure.  Lilyhammer is more of a Norwegian production than an American one and it turns out to be a dark comedy version of  The Sopranos  and its only fair that Steven got the role. There is not a single dull moment in the entire series as the ex-mobster makes fri...

‘Cold case of a missing kid’ seems to be the formula that works the best for most of the British Supernatural Thrillers these days.  Requiem  , too follows the trend when 23 years later, the case of a toddler who went missing in 1994 comes into limelight. The series begins in breathtaking pace and the subsequent episodes somehow goes meandering and is unable to keep up with the brilliant beginning.  It’s definitely not as good as  Dark ,  The Five  or Broadchurch but definitely better than 1922 and Collateral. The series begins with an old man in a small Welsh Village commits suicide, followed by another suicide in London of the mother of a rising Cello star Matilda Gray ( Lydia Wilson ) right in front of her. The element of supernatural is laden in the very first shots itself. Matilda and her friend Hal Fine( Joel Fry ) travels to the Welsh Village in search of the truth following the few clues left behind by her mother. The remainder of the season...

Collateral (2018) , is a  new four part limited mini-series that was made by BBC and presented to the rest of the world as a Netflix Original. We were thoroughly intrigued by the trailer which promised a lot with the stellar cast. The 4 episodes of this mini series occur over four consecutive days. They have tried to address too many issues in this short mini series, which in my opinion might have muddles the waters a bit.  Carey Mulligan  as DI Kip Gillespe,  Jeany Spark  as Major Sandrine Shaw,  John Simm  as MP David Mars and  Nicola Walker  (one of my favorite mini screen actors) as a gay clergy were stellar in their roles.  The series has bits about the pains of a homecoming soldier, the desperation of the refugees fleeing from their terror riddled home countries, drug abuse amongst young mothers,  LGBT acceptance amongst the English clergy, rank abusing Army superiors and the immigration stance that has ravaged all ...

Netflix has pretty much everything about the future sorted out and ready for us to witness.  Mute  follows the story of  Leo Beiler ( Alexander Skarsgård ) who is a mute bartender who goes in search for his missing girlfriend (Nadiraah- played by  Seyneb Saleh )  and  Skarsgård  is probably the only good thing about the whole movie.  The story is set 40 years into the future in Berlin, which is filled with immigrants where all cultures collide. I had read somewhere that the film took the makers 10 odd years to complete and the end product did leave you with a lot of questions and ‘meh’ moments. Paul Rudd  , too put in a pretty good shift as one of the two cocky American surgeons who makes quick bucks by sewing up mob henchmen who get injured in ‘the line of duty’. The first few minutes were intriguing and as the story evolved I was left wondering what the end game was.  The plot is predictable, dialogues uninteresting and...

I was probably very late to the party when I had started watching  Parks and Recreation   . A failed attempt at 'The Office' and 'Arrested Development' meant that I had almost lost faith on there being another binge-worthy sitcom amongst the modern day contenders. It was without much of an expectation that I started watching Parks and Rec and the low expectations probably went a long way in me ending up liking the series. Parks and Rec is centered around the very ambitious Leslie Knopp ( Amy Poehler ) who is a Deputy Director at The Parks and Recreation in a small town, Pawnee, Indiana and her colleagues. The series stars at a very slow pace with the introduction to characters taking its own sweet time. Leslie, is a hard-working, passionate, self-driven lady who wants to help everyone around her.  Nick Offerman   plays the government hating, privacy loving, steak loving, 'hard-working' head of the Parks and Rec department ,  Ron Swanson  who als...

If  Netflix   ever were a Football Club, they would easily annihilate every single one of their opponents and would owe that all to their ridiculously good scouting network. The gems they unearth and produce around the globe is truly awe inspiring. It was only logical that I followed up  Bright  with Dark.    Dark   , for me, is the best ever mystery series to deal with time warp and the paranormal/supernatural. It obviously has to be if you end up binge-watching a series till 6 in the morning. Yet, the Season conclusion left me with more questions than answers (I hate it when the makers do that). We would have probably paused a hundred times in between all that to discuss and digest what we had just seen. Blink and you miss something significant. The series begins with the Einstein quote ‘The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion’ and from then its all an illusion. The story surrounds the disa...