Mild spoilers follow
Prime Video’s latest Tamil offering is a straightforward thriller unpacking the corrupt ecosystem behind the civil services exams in the country. Led by Dushara Vijayan and Aditi Balan, Exam (which also has Pushkar–Gayatri as creative producers) moves with the precision of a taut crime thriller. But the high point in a series like this isn’t really efficiency, but with its capabilities in economical, deeply symbolic storytelling. A fisherwoman, who wants at least her son to escape the stench of the fish, meets death because of the slimy little thing. Fate snatches government jobs from two deserving candidates. One goes on to fight the shark that drew blood, and the other sees fit to join the shark in the sea.
Exam asks us to suspend disbelief for the most part, as it does revolve around a former convict impersonating a DSP. But it sidesteps this limitation with its ability to tell us a compelling emotional thriller.
DSP Maramalli (Aditi Balan), who introduces herself to people as the tahsildar’s daughter, is used to getting things easy in life; the powerful police job included. Jhansi (Dushara Vijayan), on the other hand, is the daughter of a duck farmer in rural Tamil Nadu; her struggle begins with cycling miles each day to college in pursuit of her right to education. What happens when they switch lives? This isn’t a drill, but a high-stakes abduction that puts Jhansi, a convict, in the place of Maramalli to investigate the dirty dark web of the government exam scam. Exam isn’t merely a study of the haves and have-nots in the purview of the country’s flawed education system. It is a study, even if a tad too simplistic, of human fallibility.
The series unfolds in the fictional Tamil Nadu hillock of Thykara, where, in days from now, the Group 1 exams begin. Jhansi, with her ragtag team of willing helpers — including Abbas as Jayachandran, a former jailer — races to nab the mastermind behind the fraud. The first few episodes expertly navigate Jhansi’s plan and its glaring weak points. Every episode in the seven-episode series almost always ends with a cliffhanger, where you’re dead sure our heroine is going to get caught in the act — but she skirts by. Director A Sarkunam has fun fleshing out these portions, grabbing our attention away from the big Maramalli problem. Why would they have her cuffed right in the DSP’s office? How does Jhansi evade trouble in the age of biometrics and retina scans? How does she recruit a group to stand behind her and risk everything they have? The series doesn’t always hold all the answers, but it does turn our attention to what it does best.
The show connects a complex web of lies and truths and keeps going back in time to tell us a story of an injustice. The most interesting part of the series is the two characters who choose varying paths after facing infringement in their own right — the villain here is particularly well fleshed out, even if a lot of their dialogue seems stilted. Another duo that’s interesting is Maramalli and Jhansi. Dushara Vijayan, who gets the most screen space in the film, leads the show, passing her quiet vulnerability as strength. But Balan doesn’t get too much of a role to play in a show that could’ve explored its leading women’s dualities better.
Although Vijayan does a lot of the weightlifting, we see sparks from various characters around her. A cop, who continues to call the DSP as "ma'am" despite her lies, and the driver who nurses a dream to see his daughter in his boss's position one day. The ending may be a little too convenient, but it effectively lays the groundwork for a sequel while keeping expectations in check.