`Bestseller': A revenge drama dressed under surgical layers of psychological thriller

Tahir (Bajwa) is a struggling author since a decade after his first hit and he runs into a vulnerable lass who seems to have him installed in the nucleus of her life and holds an intense admiration for him. Meenu (Hassan) and her story appeal as the light at the end of the tunnel for the author and this unfolds the plot.

One of the aspects that the Amazon original series has hit on target is the layering of the story into coherent yet independently unraveling arcs, pretty much like an elegant cocktail lasagne.

The stories draw threads from different characters and bind them neatly towards the end. Along the stretch of performances, Hassan leads the charge on dramatic event turns along with Bajwa who rides on a sluggish step initially to reach a comfortable pace into the character halfway through the series. Gauhar Khan and Satyajeet Dubey have been bleached and diluted in their roles. Mithun's character is underutilized under the forced humor of a connoisseur and paling backstory.

Abhyankar and company fare well in crafting the essentials of a crime psychological thriller - a smart setting with a step reveal a process that is guided by essential mishaps that chalk the crime to the typical cop (Mithun Chakraborty) with a strained past. The efforts dull down in the nuances of revenge plot where storytelling turns lazy in the hacking arcs, especially where the screens glow green and unrelated digital characters dance across the geeky laptop for no good reason. The essence of revenge is directed at the wrongdoings of the author by extracting a story of personal value without consent and exploiting it to his own advantage. However, the layered antagonist seems more in denial and confusion ending as a half-baked act rather than a holistic arc.

The revenge is the crux around the questionable thematic underpinning of the story that also trickles down in an implied sense to the source material, adaptation of Ravi Subramanian's `The Bestseller she wrote'.

The revenge focused on the author with no addressing of the vehement response by the public towards the original subjects of the story hammers down the opportunity of exploring this complex interconnecting subject into a linear and dry vengeance that is flatly predictable halfway through the episodes and can barely be assisted by the well-crafted chapters. The background score and the color palette also fail to accentuate any thrill or excitement into the story halfway down the lane.

While the Bestseller does not necessarily hold up to its titular meaning, it works fine as an under seasoned and comfort food for the revenge thriller staple.