Black Widows, starring Mona Singh, Shamita Shetty and Swastika Mukherjee, is now streaming on Zee5 and the show is a perfect mixture of suspense and humour. It tells about the vindication of three women who have all been suffering at the hands of their husbands. Combined with a powerful script, riveting cinematography and a fitting background score, the dark comedy manages to keep its audience on the edge of the seat throughout, making up for a worthy binge-watch.
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Black Widows is the remake of the 2014 Finnish TV series Muskat Lesket and is the eighth adaptation of the series after having been localised in seven other countries. Adapted by Radhika Anand and directed by Birsa Dasgupta, the show is produced by Namit Sharma and Big Synergy Media Ltd. Behind the superb cinematography is DOP Shubhankar Bhar with Aditya Pushkarna (NoizzeBoxx) giving the musical score for the series. Black Widow also stars Sharad Kelkar, Parambrata Chatterjee, Raima Sen, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Amir Ali, Shruti Vyas, Faisal Malik and Nikhil Bhambhari in pivotal roles.
The series opens with shots of three families on a holiday at a picture-perfect town and the husbands enjoying their time on a speed boat. Minutes later, the tranquillity of the previous scene breaks down as the boat goes up in flames. Soon after the accident, the police reaches the site and questions the wives of the victims. During this interrogation, we get a view into the lives of these three women and the abusive marriages they were part of: all the three husbands were toxic in their own ways. Lalit (Mohan Kapoor) beat and tortured Jayati (Swastika Mukherjee) behind closed doors, Nilesh (Vipul Roy) forced Kavita (Shamita Shetty) to sleep with his business clients for job promotions and Jatin (Sharad Kelkar) constantly threatened Veeera (Mona Singh) to take away their daughter from her.
At this point, the audience is made aware of the fact that these women are the ones behind the boat accident and the entire incident is nothing but an act of revenge. We see the three women finding freedom in their widowhood, but even that joy doesn’t last long enough for them. When a stubborn policeman Pankaj (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) discovers a vital clue that can connect them to the accident, all hell breaks loose. From there the story takes a darker turn, as one of the husbands, is found to be alive.
Every scene in the twelve-episode series is as beautifully enacted as it is shot. The actors, all of them, do a brilliant job at bringing their characters to life. The lead ladies are easy to root for, despite the murderous agendas they carry up their sleeves. In fact, the show makes one ask strong questions like who is the hero and who is the villain, for at some point, even the revenge taken by the ladies is somehow justified. And such is the calibre of Mona Singh, Shamita Shetty and Swastika Mukherjee that they make their audience stick to their characters until the end, no matter what they do.
The sisterhood between the three ladies is also wonderfully portrayed. Here are three battered women who have come together to find solace in each other. The plot they hatch to achieve their freedom is nothing new; women taking revenge on those who harm them is an age-old trope that is found even in the Greek mythological stories of Medea and Philomela. The way this revenge blooms into sisterhood and the lengths the three lead women go to protect each other is something that warms the heart, although even this friendship starts to show cracks later on in the show.
Dark comedy is not something that is widely explored in Indian TV shows and Black Widow does a great job in nudging the genre ahead in this country. Make sure to watch this one, and make sure you take your time to do so, for once you start with this show, there is a good chance that you won’t be able to stop until you’ve finished with all the episodes.
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