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Shaque: Parineeti Chopra's mystery series is so determined to explain itself, there’s barely anything left to solve
Parineeti Chopra's web series debut Shaque revolves around a mother, whose newborn gets kidnapped soon after birth.
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A cheating husband, a lying best friend, a manipulative mother-in-law, a kidnapped child... I wondered what were the odds of one woman being cursed with every possible problem at the same time. Then came Shaque: Trust No One, Parineeti Chopra’s latest web show, to remind me that when a writer needs a plot, probability can simply be shown the door. Here, convenience isn’t just a storytelling device. It is practically a character.
The story, spread across seven episodes, revolves around Anvita (Parineeti Chopra), whose daughter is kidnapped soon after birth in Shimla. She and her husband, Alok (Tahir Raj Bhasin), desperately search for her, but their efforts yield nothing. Eight years pass, and Anvita has another daughter in the meantime. But she remains unable to move on, suffering episodes in which she mistakes other little girls for the daughter she lost.
Helping her navigate the case is cop Khurana (Anuup Soni). Every year, on her missing daughter’s birthday, Anvita receives a photograph of a young girl, with her face hidden. Convinced that the girl is her daughter, she holds on to the belief that she will eventually find her.
Her suspicions intensify when Sakshi (Jennifer Winget) and Gaurav (Dhruv Chaudhry) arrive in Shimla with their daughter. Anvita becomes convinced that their child is the daughter she has been searching for all these years. What follows forms the crux of the story.
Shaque, written and directed by Rensil D’Silva, relies almost entirely on convenience. I remember reading somewhere recently that OTT platforms now advise filmmakers to design their projects around viewers’ diminishing attention spans. Shaque feels like a shining addition to that category. In case you forget what the story is about, some character invariably turns up every 10 minutes to announce it. If you don’t understand what’s happening, don’t worry, because the film will explain it to you in so many words. Repeatedly. In the process, it ends up dumbing down its own plot. Shaque also begins to resemble another recent release, Gandhari, which too revolved around a mother searching for her kidnapped daughter.
The performances, as a result, are playing to the gallery. Parineeti is a good actor otherwise, but here it’s a mixed bag. Tahir Raj Bhasin and Harleen Sethi (as Parineeti’s best friend) are okay. Anuup Soni’s character arc ends abruptly. Jennifer Winget gets a meaty part, and she fares well. Soni Razdan as the mother-in-law is average.
Overall, Shaque has all the ingredients of a gripping mystery, but keeps interrupting itself to explain what it is cooking. By the time the twists arrive, the suspense has already been diluted by exposition and characters behaving exactly as the plot requires. Trust, as the title warns us, is in short supply here. Unfortunately, so is subtlety.
