'The Game: You Never Play Alone' Series Review: Misogyny and Mayhem in Chennai

Cliffhangers are the hot sauce of series storytelling. They're meant to make us drool, lean forward, smack our lips in anticipation. They are old spice, essential for closing out seasons but also necessary as episode-to-episode hooks. They fulfil an ajinomoto-like role in the cooking of compelling shows, and even the most prestigious chefs will cop to their use. The American television critic Emily Nussbaum is dead-on when she writes, "...cliffhangers are fake-outs. They reveal that a story is artificial, then dare you to keep believing."

One can imagine the writers of The Game — a new Tamil-language thriller series streaming on Netflix — tripping over themselves to find the tangiest stings in the tail. There's something cheaply addictive in how they go about capping episodes. Everything feels fair use. Red heels soaked in blood, mysteriously dropped off at the protagonist's doorstep? Hell yes. A compromising video from seven years ago? Bring it on.

That the series survives such cheapness is a credit to its storytelling. Director Rajesh M. Selva covers his bases and keeps a basic momentum going. The aforementioned heels belong to Kavya (Shraddha Srinath), a Chennai-based game designer married to another, more established game designer (talk about a co-op). Calm, bespectacled Anoop (Santhosh Prathap) is what some might call a 'paavam husband', though the phrase, used by sexist online trolls to run down trailblazing female professionals, drives Kavya nuts.

On the night she wins a major award, Kavya experiences a blackout and is rescued from Karikatukuppam beach, assaulted and unconscious. It's established as a pre-planned attack, a trail of cyberstalking and online harassment culminating in physical harm. There's also Anoop's viral mobile game to account for, Mask Mayhem, a GPS-powered Augmented Reality (AR) game that's causing real accidents in the city.

This is a fast-paced, twist-forward series, lacking the psychological underpinnings of a show like I May Destroy You. The dialogue writing is never not on the nose ("This is quite common for women in our industry. Any industry, in fact."). When Kavya informs Anoop that her drink was spiked on the night of the attack, he rattles off a series of deductions before comforting her in her moment of need. The couple switches comfortably between English and Tamil, their conversations reflective of a more politically correct age: "Don't think I'm being overprotective, I just want you to be safe"...."See, I love you being independent, but we cannot be irresponsible."

Srinath anchors the series, allowing shades of vulnerability and confusion in a tough exterior. As a game designer, Kavya emphasises depth and detailing—a characteristic she only patchily shares with the show. One of the subplots concerns her niece, Tara, a lonely, bullied teen who falls prey to a romance scam. It's handled with patience and care, only to switch gears further ahead in service of a 'shock moment'.

The Game nevertheless amuses as a send-up of India's digital economy. "The download is all that matters," says a thin-lipped foreign investor in Kavya's company. Mobile is both present and future (the only character we see gaming on a console is poor Anoop). Misogyny runs rampant when data is cheap, and, as with fake news and political radicalisation, you never play alone.