When I was little, my mother’s very North Indian family would clink glasses, raise voices and play card games on winter nights. As the only sober primate in the room (I wasn’t sure about the wayward dog), calling the adults’ bluff was a cinch, because their intoxicated minds and muscles kept failing them: they’d place the cards face-side up by mistake, coughed harder every time they tried to lie, or even forgot the name of the suits (“3 of Souls!”) before playing their hand. If they ever played poker, I thought, we’d end up homeless. Shaque: Trust No One is the cinematic equivalent of those nights: the harder it strives to be serious (or just convincing), the funnier it gets. Some might call that entertainment; I call it the comforting embrace of mediocrity. At times, I got excited at the prospect of those farcical, downright incompetent card games.
The seven-episode thriller opens in a Shimla maternity ward. A new mother, Anvita Dutt (Parineeti Chopra), is cradling her newborn named Apeksha, surrounded by family and friends who look like they’ve freshly murdered someone and buried the body in a vegan’s backyard. If guilt were a person, it would sue these folks for misrepresentation and identity theft. But everyone is hiding a secret; there’s no time to be subtle. The camera makes sure we see each of their sheepish faces shooting contorted glances. The Hitchcockian score stops short of whispering “Shaque: Trust No One okay?” in our ears. Are you watching closely?
There’s Anvita’s husband, Alok (Tahir Raj Bhasin), who gets a shady phone call and steps outside; there’s her best friend Shreya (Harleen Sethi), who also gets a shady call and steps outside. Of course Alok and Shreya are having an affair; their infidelity is revealed some scenes later, but the series has cheated on itself by then. There’s Shreya’s husband, Bhaskar (Sumeet Vyas), whose eyes dart around like he’s the one sleeping with his bestie’s partner. And there’s Alok’s mother (Soni Razdan), who behaves as if she’s a burglar stealing cookies at midnight. You see this opening scene and realise how “intrigue” is such an abused storytelling device. You can point the camera at a rat, promise the viewer that it will speak and not squeak, and the resulting tension between viewer and screen can be passed off as intrigue.
The scene ends with manic Anvita’s baby getting abducted by a fake nurse. Inspector Khurana (Anup Soni) arrives, checks the CCTV footage, notices a few angles missing, and scolds the guard. Investigation done. The narrative jumps to the future, 9 years later, where this is the deal: Anvita throws a birthday party for the mythical Apeksha every year, but she receives one faceless photograph of her growing girl by a seemingly generous kidnapper. (The ever-competent Khurana scans these photos and declares “smart kidnapper” because it has no fingerprints). Fortunately, a therapist tells Anvita that “God blessed you with another daughter, Siddhi, after your Apeksha went missing” in so many words; it’s staged as a surprise to the audience. Sometimes I wonder if new-age dialogue writers realise that exposition doesn’t have to be two humans mansplaining backstories (“8 years ago, when you came to me…”) to one another under the guise of a chat.
The rest of Shaque is its tagline “Trust No One” in visual form. Anvita grows increasingly cuckoo, convinced that every parent has stolen her daughter; she dials up the crazy when her suspicions land on a new couple in town (featuring Jennifer Winget, as Sakshi), whose 9-year-old girl looks familiar. Anvita is doubted and gaslighted by everyone, but she is no Jodie Foster in Flightplan. One of the characters drugs her coffee every day so that her hallucinations become an excuse for disco Netflix lighting. Only the cop believes her, because he’s also a wonky tarot card reader whose cards tell her to stay deluded (or hopeful). To be fair, it’s hard to tell Anvita’s sane from insane. It’s one thing to sell the descent of a grieving mother in denial; it’s another to watch a genuinely dangerous woman who stays off her meds in order to continue her search. Madness (or London-return arcs) is often used as an aesthetic to camouflage overacting or underacting. No prizes for guessing which category the hyper-expressive Anvita falls in.
If it isn’t clear already, Shaque is the kind of mainstream Bollywood relic that flaunts the smartness of an unsalted peanut. You don’t watch it; it watches you — and scoffs at you for expecting better. Of all the genres, mystery thrillers cannot be made for second-screen or ambient viewing (where ‘content’ is dumbed down for viewers who do not view), because it naturally relies on information, details and pulpy turns. But this show introduces red herrings and diversions — an illegal surrogacy racket; a black magic track featuring baby skeletons that look as real as scrambled eggs with strawberry sauce passed off as flesh; a murder; and rich characters mentioning “tribals” like South Mumbai liberals at a wine-tasting do — until we stop caring about Anvita’s quest altogether. It is designed to assure you that it’s fine to not pay attention, as long as you remain vaguely invested in whether the rat will speak or squeak.
The craft belongs to the tier-two-thriller class of 2006. Physical and emotional continuity is a myth. One of the suspects has their life turned upside town when their spouse is arrested for a crime (and brutally written off the show), but this person appears at Anvita’s next party as if it’s just another day; it doesn’t help that Anvita has such sleuthy main-character energy that her idea of checking in on said person is to ask “are you sure you don’t need me there?” and that’s all. At another point, a cop’s surgery is interrupted by his subordinate because the surgeon turns out to be a suspect; cut to the cop interrogating the surgeon, as if the operating table — and the tumour — was a distant dream. His cancer is exploited by the screenplay in comical ways; you know he’s going to collapse on the brink of solving the case, but the timing is impeccably bad.
The cast is uniformly out of depth, but as a believer in Tahir Raj Bhasin, I was quite shaken by his deer-in-headlights performance as the cheating spouse with strange hair. But it’s not his fault. When in doubt, blame the algorithm. The camera moves faster than the faces it films to depict psychological trickery. When the reveal comes, it’s so predictable that you wonder if the children can grow up without mental health problems after witnessing the adults embarrass themselves for 7 episodes. But the series doesn’t care for the kids, why should you? In fact, I’m pretty sure the newborn also looked guilty before her own disappearance in that opening scene. Nobody is clean. Shaque keeps warning you to trust no one, so it’s only fitting to question the series first (which may or may not include humming “Koi shaq? What’s up?” in Himesh Reshammiya’s voice). At the onset of India’s streaming era, the term ‘television plus’ was coined to justify the place of daily-soap-coded shows. By that yardstick, Shaque is television minus.