An amateurish crime comedy that wants to be taken seriously, Mrs Undercover can never quite find its bearings, observes Sukanya Verma.
In the 1980s, Basu Chatterjee created a television series highlighting the might of a middle-class housewife in Priya Tendulkar's righteous skin as Rajani. It's 2023, but she's still fighting to get her due in Anushree Mehta's Mrs Undercover, starring Radhika Apte as a worn-out housewife in Kolkata.
Except she's actually a secret agent who has sunk into oblivion after her agency forgets about her existence.
A decade later, having lost all their officers, a covert team led by Chief Rangeela (Rajesh Sharma) wants her back on the job and pin down a misogynist serial killer simply addressed as Common Man.
Before Mrs Undercover proceeds to become a nonsensical cat and mouse between a housewife and Common Man, it insists on lamenting about the general lack of appreciation for the homemaker.
And so Durga (Apte) juggles between domestic drudgery, a callous, cheating husband (Shaheb Chattopadhyay), a school-going kid and in-laws (Biswajeet Chakraborty and Laboni Sarkar), of which the latter's amnesia is mined for puerile laughs, until Rangeela implores her to resume duties by showing up before her posing as a street hawker or temple priest.
Its True Lies-reminiscent premise had decent scope for feminism and fun if its wafer-thin script wasn't marred by Mehta and Abir Sengupta's sloppy writing.
We learn about the offender's identity in the first scene itself, but neither his motive nor his method make any sense.
Durga's journey too, from spy to spouse, is treated with equal ambiguity. It's hard to understand why someone so clumsy at home and work is such an indispensable asset in espionage circles.
If there was a prize for the most indiscreet undercover agent tailing her target in an attention-grabbing manner, Durga would win hands down. To be fair, the entire organisation's failure to stay in stealth mode renders the mission phony.
Titular heroine Radhika Apte has nailed quite a few solo gigs before. But her Durga is more scatter-brains than spunk, more Marathi mulgi than Bengali goddess despite furious chants of Durga taking over its bogus climax.
Co-star Rajesh Sharma delivers the goods as usual, but Sumeet Vyas can barely keep up with its wishy-washy mystery.
Unlike ZEE5's other Kolkata-themed crime capers Bob Biswas and Lost, Mrs Undercover is devoid of any local feel or flavour.
An amateurish crime comedy that wants to be taken seriously, Mrs Undercover can never quite find its bearings.
Mrs Undercover streams on ZEE5.
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