It felt great watching Sushmita Sen performing onscreen after almost a decade long. Her comeback on a crime suspense-thriller web series “Aarya” now streaming on Disney + Hotstar is an impressive, mature, and balanced web series.
‘Aarya’ review: Story
‘Aarya’ is a nine episodes season with each episode of almost an hour. The series is directed by Ram Madhvani and Sandeep Modi. The story is an adaptation of the Dutch series “Penoza.”
The story follows Aarya (Susmita Sen), playing a wonderful homemaker to Tej (Chandrachur Singh) and living a happy life with their three kids. Aarya is a devoted wife, caring mother, and a wonderful daughter and sister.
Tej is the CEO of a pharmaceuticals company, which is the company that Aarya’s father owns. Their business is dangerous as it involves several illegal businesses behind the face of their pharmaceutical company.
Aarya, Tej, and their kids live in a multi-storied mansion and a glamorized lifestyle. Aarya’s sister is getting married, and they have a function at her paternal house.
Soon the story shows the nature of their family business, which is now run by three people Sangram (Ankur Bhatia), brother of Aarya, Tej, and Jawahar (Namit Das).
Sangram steals bags of products that cost around 300 crore, which belongs to another prolific businessman of the town, a drug cartel boss Shekhawat (Manish Chaudhari).
Tej is not happy with this and continues to convince Sangram and Jawahar that this act of theirs will get them killed all.
When Tej realizes that the business isn’t safe anymore for him and his family, he convinced Aarya that he would leave the business and planning something for everyone’s protection.
Unfortunately, Tej is being killed by an unknown biker in broad daylight that only witnessed Adi, the youngest son of Aarya and Tej.
Aarya barely knows anything about the dirty family business soon finds herself circled in a confusing situation.
She is being questioned suspiciously about her husband’s death and secrets of her family business by a narcotics cop ACP Khan.
He reveals to her that Tej was supposed to give him a USB stick that contains all the details and evidence about her father’s illegal business.
On top of that, Shekhawat threatened her and demanded 300 crores that Tej, Jawahar, and Sangram owed him.
With Sangram lands up in the jail, Tej dead and Jawahar isn’t the fit person to trust Aarya is left with no choice but to lend her support to Shekhawat to protect her family.
On the other hand, her three kids are messed up ever since their father’s death. Veer started experiencing a bit of drug and involved with a girl, Aru is looking for a father figure in the wrong people, and young Adi is shaken up after witnessing Tej’s murder.
‘Aarya’ is also about the journey of a mother.
As she takes matters in her hand, she has to do some dirty work too of which she isn’t proud of at all. With ACP Khan hovering around her all day and night, it is hard for her to keep her kids at peace.
Can Aarya return the 300 crores to Shekhawat?
Who did kill Tej?
Does she become the new drug lord of her business?
The end episodes of Aarya is something unexpected and answers to every question.
Analysis of the web series:
Sushmita Sen playing the titular character ‘Aarya,’ is quite story-driven. The entire web series is revolved around the life of Aarya after her husband’s demise how she carries herself circling with threats and distrust of her people.
The character Aarya is a wonderful mother. All she wants and desires is to keep her kids at peace and safe. She has no interest in running her father’s illegal business.
Sushmita Sen brings grace and sophistication to the character of Aarya. Her dialogues and the way she carries herself throughout is eye-pleasing and reminds me of the fact how dignified she is.
Even though it’s her comeback series after a long time, I felt her maturity had helped her in portraying Aarya. The only flaw that I felt in her performance is her lack of delivering the emotional scenes.
Director Ram Madhvani and Sandeep Modi have introduced a lot many characters in the series, and all are interlinked with Aarya.
The series explored Aarya’s relationship with each character. Her cordial and motherly relationship with her sister, her on/off friendship with Maya Jawahar’s wife, and her hatred towards Jawahar (Namit Das).
Flaws:
In my opinion, a few characters could have been explored. Like, Daulat (Sikander Kher) is underutilized. No doubt, he has been given enough screen space but not enough engagement.
The makers of the series have given much importance in showing the teen love story brewed between Aarya’s elder son Veer and Pallavi but cared less in telling the gay relationship that ACP Khan had.
Since there isn’t any subplot after a point, the storyline felt dragging unnecessarily. I wish the makers had spent little more effort in developing other supporting casts since they have given one hour each to an episode.
The story of Aarya is not refreshing, but it is gripping enough to make you watch, especially for Sushmita Sen.
The above web series “Aarya Review” is based on my opinion after watching the series.