Killer Soup Review: Manoj Bajpayee, Konkona Sen Sharma Impress In This Meal

Abhishek Chaubey’s Killer Soup is touted as a black comedy which doubles up as a thriller. There is very little comedy in it though, and it is not much of a thriller either. Penned by Chaubey (who is also the show’s creator) along with Harshad Nalawade, Anant Tripathi and Unaiza Merchant, the eight-episode web series – which is now on Netflix – begins with a bowl of soup, which Konkona Sen Sharma’s Swathi prepares with a lot of love, even passion, for hubby Prakash (Manoj Bajpayee, in a dual role). It is lamb trotter (paya) soup, and she serves it to him. He hates it, but seeing her waiting for him to say whether he likes it, Prakash pretends to drink it up but manages to empty the bowl in the kitchen sink. The wife finds out and maybe that was the starting point for her dislike for him.

Sadly, a fascinating plot travels all over the place because of below-average narration and editing. The series is pretty much confusing till about episode six, after which it takes an effort to follow the thread. And there it is packed with just about everything. Money laundering, blackmail, extra-marital affair and corpses littered all over the place. Characters like Aravind (Sayaji Shinde) and police inspector Hassan (Nasser) enrich the work with their superb performances. Of course, Bajpayee and Sen Sharma are excellent in roles that may not have been easy to essay.

But what is the story all about? Well, Swathi wants to get rid of her husband, and get back into the arms of her lover, Umesh (also played by Bajpayee). She hatches a plan, but as luck would have it, she finds that every time she is set for murder, the person either gets bumped off by someone else or falls from a cliff to his death. So, she never becomes a killer. Wow!

She has a lofty ambition: to open her own resort, and very nearly succeeds. Most of Killer Soup harps on this angle and takes us through a winding path along mountains and valleys. The setting is lovely, a hill station with a fictitious name, Mainjur. But actually, it is Munnar in Kerala.

Finally, I have said this earlier. You do not need eight parts to narrate a story, a mere four would do, and they would work with smart writing, an imaginative narrative style and editing with a touch of precision. Killer Soup could have certainly benefited if it had stuck to these.