Jazz City series review
Cast: Arifin Shuvoo, Sauraseni Maitra, Shantanu Ghatak, Aniruddha Gupta, Sayandeep Sen, Shreya Bhattacharya, Shataf Figar
Creator: Soumik Sen
Where to watch: SonyLiv
Star rating: ★★
Sometimes ambition is not enough. Even good intent is not enough to salvage a story that does not know its own pulse. Such is the case with the new SonyLiv series Jazz City. From the large, expansive frames to the many little paths this story takes to navigate a turbulent time of national importance, I see how much has gone into making the show. But that does not help its case, or for creator Soumik Sen, as the show remains inert despite its full-blown capacity, incurious despite all the concoction of different factors, and mostly, out of depth even with so much space to fill. Jazz City holds promise, but it seems like that is everything it can hold after all.
The premise
Spread across 10 hour-long episodes, Jazz City starts off with little force. I was waiting for the characters to land, the plot points to draw the line, and the tone to settle down. But it never took off in the first place. We are taken back to 1971, ahead of the Bangladesh Liberation War- a rather overused and overfed era in long-format storytelling at this point in time. We meet a club owner in Calcutta, the young and handsome Jimmy Roy (Arifin Shuvoo), who will be reluctantly drawn into the revolutionary movement, where he must help in protecting three Bangladeshi students (Samudra Singha, Arindam Sardar, Dipagra Banik) who are on the run from Pakistani military officials.
The resident singer Pamela (Alexandra Taylor) looks down upon him and sings her songs with a strangeness that feels off from the first scene itself. Then there is Sheela (Sauraseni Maitra), who returns and is quite taken into the movement for her own reasons. More crucially, Jimmy catches the eye of Indian intelligence officer Sinha (Shantanu Ghatak), and the story takes off from there.
What does not work
Even as these plot points intermingle and several other small players enter the mix, Jazz City never achieves the nuances of an investigative thriller rolled into a musical drama. The scenes lack authenticity and feel unbearably staged- filled with stiff dialogues and unnecessarily laid-back staging. There are no elaborations where they are most needed, no surprises when the characters circle back on their impulses, and no introspections on what lies at the heart of this mix. The first episode falls flat on several grounds, as none of the characters pulls back on the connecting thread and come off as inconsequential set-pieces hovering around the large sets.
But what about the staging of the jazz club at the centre of it all? How does this story offer no fascination or interrogation of the club’s origins in Calcutta? The music, the live singers, the footnotes of the revolution that began around it. As a fictional story set within a real historical context, it misses so much to play with in terms of the conflicts of the land and its people, and the manner in which violence was amplified and became part of the era’s social consciousness. Jimmy Roy is a character whose transformation feels too neat, too convinient and too stupid after a point because the character is written in only one note. Alas, Arifin Shuvoo does not get the chance to infuse too much into his arc. His arc with Meera feels unnecessary from the very beginning, never fully culminating into a bleeding heart of love and sacrifice.
Only the set and costume design add much-needed texture and focus to the narrative, which begins to test the viewer’s patience after the first few episodes. Jazz City means well, but how long can it survive just on the basis of that? It is a show that sinks under its own weight and is never fully able to commit to the danger, restlessness, and anxiety of a troubled socio-political climate. It is too neat, too calculated, and sadly, too eager to reach a resolution.
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