Dev Telly Review: Ashish Chowdhry as the Indian Sherlock is off to an intriguing start

Ashish Chowdhry, known for his roles in Bollywood movies like Dhamaal series, Girlfriend and Qayamat, is returning to the small screen with his new show Dev. The show, which airs on Colors, is a detective show and will be confined to the weekends. The first episode aired today and here’s our review of the same…

What’s it about

Dev Anand Burman (Ashish Chowdhry) is a private detective who has an immaculate sense of logical deduction and possesses excellent observational skills. He also has a devil-may-care attitude and often clashes with the police. He, however, has a dark past where he was a cop and had a beautiful wife (Puja Banerjee). At the start of the episode, he is shown dangling from the top of a high rise building by the man who is revealed to have killed his wife. But he smartly outwits his would-be killer and gets him trapped by the police. Later he is been asked to investigate what is his first case of the show, the kidnapping of a little girl Anya. The suspects involve the maid, her boyfriend, her father’s drug addict brother and her debt-ridden father himself. What looks like a simple case begins to turn more and more complicated, as Dev also begins to confront his past.

What’s hot

We don’t have really good detective shows on our channels these days, with the last good ones being Pankaj Kapur’s Karamchand and Vijay Anand’s Tehkikaat. While Dev still has to reach that levels of greatness, it has started off decently and the first episode is quite interesting. Ashish Chowdhry is a good actor if he is given nice material to work around, and he is more than decent here. Also the first case starts off in a very plain manner, but by the time the episode ends, things become more interesting, as the episode ends on a cliff hanger. Another thing that has to lauded is that it has been shot on real location in Munai, including local trains. In fact, there is a well-done action scene involving local trains.

What’s not

While Dev wants to be original, we can’t help but draw parallels to other shows from the West, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and Idris Elba’s Luther. While Dev’s deductive skills are something that we have seen in Sherlock, including some real fast editing, the throwbacks to his dark past harks to Luther. There is also the subplot of his landlady that is so Sherlock. Also I believe a little better direction and some glossy editing would have worked wonders here, if you really wanted to attract fans of this genre to the show.

Our verdict

While Indian television deals with saas-bahu sagas, naagins and children getting married to adults, it is often a welcome change to have shows like Dev that brings the dying genre of detective shows on Indian television. The first episode had a lot of interesting moments, and Ashish Chowdhry is surely apt for the role. Give it a chance!

Rating: 3.0 out of 5

Reviewed by Sreeju Sudhakaran

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