Netflix’s Delhi Crime is the best show India has ever produced. There is nothing comparable to it and there probably never will be. It’s relentlessly outstanding.
Season one shed a blinding light on the ongoing Delhi rape epidemic. It was an unflinching and terrifying watch but peeling your eyes away proved difficult.
Season two may not be as focused but it’s just as exhilarating. Rather than laser in on a single topic, it instead appears to contend with a myriad of problems endemic to India such as the prevalence of violent gangs in the North and the plight of Adivasis (whom are criminally never discussed in Bollywood). Towards the end however, it becomes much more clear what this season is really, truly about – female agency.
Despite the show emitting a hyper-masculine energy with its noir mise-en-scène, violent imagery and pungently grimy miasma, the show is decidedly feminine. Everything begins and ends with women in Delhi Crime. Their fears, desires and the tough decisions a patriarchal society coerces them to make every single day are those of everyday women.
At the heart of this juxtaposition is the show’s protagonist, DCP Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah) who is the most memorable, most complex female police officer to grace the screen since Fargo‘s Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand). Like Officer Gunderson, DCP Chaturvedi isn’t a stereotypical grandstanding female superhero but rather an everyday woman trying to do her job, which makes her infinitely more interesting.
“Despite the show emitting a hyper-masculine energy with its noir mise-en-scène, violent imagery and pungently grimy miasma, the show is decidedly feminine. Everything begins and ends with women in Delhi Crime.”
However, unlike Officer Gunderson whose appeal lies solely in her refreshing Minnesota niceness, Shah is more nuanced. If anything, she’s a modern day Kali – a multi-limbed federally employed goddess who has to heal the world, parent children and thwart evil before she clocks out.
The other female characters this season, DCP Chaturvedi’s subordinate, IPS Neeti Singh, and the season’s sadistic villainess, Lata Solanki, played with great verve by Rasika Dugal and Tillotama Shome respectively are, very much like DCP Chaturvedi, strong-willed women fighting against men who constantly try to anchor them.
Eventually, the female characters get bogged down by their attempts…because that’s what happens in real life to most women.
When DCP Chaturvedi’s resentful male superior promotes her to Commissioner and relocates her to another district, something she doesn’t want, she relinquishes grudgingly and says “OK”.
Delhi Crime: Season 2 is available now on Netflix.
