Saare Jahan Se Accha : Gripping, Taut and Tense!

Saare Jahan Se Accha : Gripping, Taut and Tense!

‘Saare Jahan se Accha’ is consistently tense, gripping and endowed with powerful performances. The best thing about this period espionage thriller, beyond hitting the urgency buttons, is that it humanizes our enemies across the border who exhibit patriotism as fervently as us.

“Information nikalna na legal hota hai na moral, Bus Zaroori Hota Hai”, R&AW agent Vishnu Shankar’s (played by the brilliantly understated Pratik Gandhi) introductory note on our intelligence machinery is both grim and gritty – he underlines the razor-sharp tasks involved in the line of duty of our unsung heroes whose success rate at critical missions may be as less as 20% (a 2 out of 10).

They couldn’t save Homi Bhabha. There’s guilt consuming his conscience. Much aware about the dangerous ramifications, Vishnu’s commitment to his duty is unwavering even when our nation’s national security is threatened with our enemy on the other side of the border secretly proliferating its nuclear bomb facility ambitions. He is immediately despatched to Islamabad by his Chief, R N Kao (A terrific Rajat Kapoor) has to sabotage Pakistan’s plans of building a nuclear facility at any cost.

The next set of events put him in a professional and emotional wringer where he must navigate the hostile challenges and unpredictable scenarios with a test of his own wits, tradecraft and resilience.

Director Sumit Purohit and creator Gaurav Shukla (of the famed Asur series) hits the right notes in conjuring a sense of pressure-cooker urgency which is a fundamental tenet in any spy thriller but what truly powers the six-part web series is its inclination to humanize the antagonists, shunning over-the-top patriotism and hyper-nationalism and look at it from personal and humane perspectives. As a result, we get a remarkable figure who resonates the right sentiments and the nation's shared emotions – Murtuza Malik, from Pakistan’s army, played by the reliable Sunny Hinduja.

 

The show is scripted by a team of 7 writers - Shukla, Bhavesh Mandalia, Meghna Srivastava and others – whose collective creative acumen converge for a well-researched and consistently absorbing drama – that straddles foreign soil - Tripoli in Libya, Europe and hobnobbing with foreign agents in the likes of Mossad’s Chief Ben Adler and Gadaffi.

 

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